JTL Presents His Version of Not So Different
by James the Lesser
Summary: Not So Different Is a Story by The Other J-D. I read it and had my own ideas for how the end of season four-Rest of Series could go. I asked permission and he granted it so I am doing my own version of the show starting at S4 E12 Fire! His story is really good and I hope those who haven't given it a chance does! It will mostly be the same with variations to work with my ideas.
1. Chapter 1

****James The Lesser Presents His Version of the Daria Gender Flip Based off of Not So Different.****

 ** **Not So Different Is a Story by The Other J-D. I read it and enjoyed it but had my own ideas for how the end of season four-Rest of Series could go. I asked permission and he granted it so I am going to do my own version of the show starting at S4 E12 Fire! His story is really good and I hope those who haven't given it a chance does! It will mostly be the same but a few variations thrown in for my ideas.**** ** __** ** **I don't know exactly how to do an idea like this so this will be done by trial and error.****

 ** _ **S4 E 12**_**

 ** _ **What's Going On Here?**_**

 **Sonny grumbled as he** flipped through the channels. He stops on the hotels own channel. "Advertising the hotel to people staying at the hotel. This has my father's work all over it."

They were talking about the opportunities for playing golf at the hotel. _ _"__ _Thank whomever has stopped my father from trying to drag me out on to the course."_

He was interrupted by a knock at the door. When he opened the door, he recognized Bobby, who'd met them on arrival. When he'd put the tray on the table and removed the lid, he started fidgeting. 'You know your sister, Quinn?'

'I might know some one by that name. Why?'

'Is she seeing anybody?'

'Only a dermatologist, for that rash', Sonny said, a little too quickly.

Bobby grinned nervously and flinched. 'Oh … er …'

Sonny looked at the youth as his own mind clicked rapidly into gear. He remembered arriving at the hotel. Bobby had offered to help with the luggage, and then taken care of Quinn's only. As he escorted Quinn inside, Jake had been left to his own devices—to speak loosely—to cope, or not, with the rest. He'd collapsed under the weight of the one case he'd managed to haul from the car and remained pinned underneath it until another bellhop came to his assistance.

Should Sonny crush Bobby's hopes quickly or leave him to be ground down by Quinn slowly?

Sonny couldn't altogether blame Bobby for Sonny's father's problems. His father would always get himself into trouble. It was because he'd set the kitchen on fire that they were staying in this hotel at all.

The issue resolved into a question which answered itself: why should Quinn get anything out of this?

'Don't worry', he said, 'it's not contagious. And even if it were, you'd never get close enough to catch it. Trust me, I'm her brother. I've seen it all before a hundred times. At most she might let you get as far as slow dancing by the fifth date. If you even make it that far."

Bobby's face took on a blank look and then, as Sonny sat down and began to eat, he blinked rapidly. Sonny decided to follow up.

'The halls of Lawndale High are littered with the hearts that girl's broken.' He shook his head meaningfully, then continued eating.

Bobby half-turned to go, then seemed to come partway back to himself and stammered, 'Well … um … enjoy your snack, sir', before leaving the room.

When the door had closed behind Bobby, Sonny turned an appraising gaze in that direction for a moment. He returned his attention to his hamburger.

As his appetite was progressively satisfied, he looked around the room again. He reflected on the kind of isolation from his parents and Quinn that staying in hotel rooms afforded him. So why wasn't he savoring it more? By the time he finished eating he was brooding hard.

Looking around the room again, his eye fell on the phone. He walked over to it, picked up the receiver, and dialed Jane.

* * *

Jane looked out of the corner of her eye at Tom, then back at the television screen. Maybe she had been a little hard on him. It hadn't been fair for her to jump down his throat about having given Sonny his phone number. He'd been quite right: __she__ had given Sonny Tom's phone number, so that they could rescue Sonny from a family bonding day. Well, she hadn't exactly jumped down his throat—she'd just asked, hadn't she? And when he reminded her of the facts, she'd let it drop, hadn't she? He'd reacted as if he didn't like the tone of her voice—but when did he get elected to decide what tone of voice she used?

She sighed quietly and took another peek at Tom. He was watching __Sick, Sad World__. At least that was something they both liked still.

It had been awkward for her at the beginning, when Sonny had made it quite clear that he didn't like Tom and didn't like Jane's involvement with him. But gradually he'd warmed to Tom. Well, not exactly 'warmed'. Still, in his own way he was getting along with Tom. That should make things easier for her. But …

This time it had started when she and Tom couldn't agree on a movie to see. If the idea of a movie hadn't come up, they would have been sitting here right now enjoying __Sick, Sad World__ , making fun of things, no problems … well, nothing to speak of, anyway.

She stole another peek at him. The thing about Sonny getting along with Tom, she told herself, was that it reminded her that maybe she and Tom weren't getting along as well as they used to. The subject of Sonny having Tom's phone number had come up because Tom had mentioned that Sonny had left him a message about a Fellini film festival, because he didn't fancy Jane's suggestion, __Screecher II__. The truth was that on some other occasion Jane might have been interested in a Fellini film, but definitely not when Tom began to talk about 'symbolism', and 'the cinema', and 'a movie with a plot'.

Wasn't it reasonable that she didn't like being condescended to? Tom had watched plenty of exploding-eyeball-type movies with her. Did he think that was all she was good for? Was he just slumming with her? Was he trying to give her some message by the way he went on about Fellini and 'the cinema'? She was about to take another brooding peek at him when the phone rang. Trent answered it. A moment later he called out to her.

'Hey, Janey! Sonny's on the phone for you.'

Tom remained silent as Jane got up from the couch and walked into the other room to take the call.

'Yo.'

Sonny noticed her tone of voice. The same tone Tom had had a problem with. 'Are you okay?'

Jane shook herself back to normal. 'Sure. What's up?'

'I thought you might like to come over and check out Le Grand Hotel.'

'Actually … I'm hanging out with Tom tonight.'

'Oh. Well, why not bring him over too? There's plenty of space. In fact it'd probably be better that way. If my parents find out you were in my room I can tell them we had your boyfriend as a chaperone.'

The thought of Sonny wanting Tom as a chaperone made Jane uncomfortable. 'Um … maybe some other time, okay?'

'I guess. You know we're going to be here for a while, but not forever? I just thought you might like the chance to see the place up close while you can.'

'Yeah. Right. So … I'll come round some time. And by the way, uh, thanks for leaving that message on Tom's machine about __La Dolce Vita__.'

'Hey, watching a dead fish wash up on shore always puts me in a good mood.'

Jane ignored Sonny's words. 'You're never in a good mood. And hey, I'm always happy to pass messages along. No trouble risking getting his parents or little sister.'

'Sure. I just …'

Jane cut in. 'Well, see ya soon! Gotta get back to Tom now!' She hung up and went back to the couch.

Tom asked her what Sonny had been calling about.

'Didn't I tell you? His dad accidentally set their kitchen on fire last night and they're staying in a hotel for a few days during the repainting.'

Tom turned his attention to her from the television. 'Nobody was hurt, right?'

'Nah. They all got out at once, the fire brigade got to it in time, and there was just some smoke damage.'

'Good.' Tom was still looking at her.

'So, um, anyway, Sonny thought maybe I'd like to come round to check out the rooms, see what the place is like. I told him we were busy tonight.'

Tom raised his eyebrows. 'Busy?'

Jane squirmed slightly. 'So, wanna go out and get some pizza?'

* * *

 **'So, still planning on** coming over to check out Le Grand Hotel some time?' Sonny said to Jane as they walked along a Lawndale High hallway. 'You know it's up to you. It's just you seemed interested when I said we'd be staying there. If you've changed your mind, that's cool.'

Jane looked closely at Sonny but he didn't change his expression. She'd been stalling him about this for the last few days without actually rejecting the idea, and getting more and more awkward about it. Now she seemed to have reached the point where she felt she had to give him some kind of explanation.

'Uh …', she said, 'the thing is … well, things have been a bit … what's the word? What I mean is' she said reluctantly, 'things haven't been so great with Tom and me lately. So I've been trying to spend more time with him.'

Sonny thought rapidly. Were Jane and Tom about to break up? Then Tom … Tom would just be out of the picture. That would have to mean Jane spending more time with him, which could never be bad, but … Did he want them to break up? Jane seemed to be happy with Tom. Even if he didn't like Tom he wanted his friend to be happy. But did he...

'There's no problem with that', he decided. 'You could spend time together at the hotel.'

They had arrived at Mrs Bennett's classroom, and Jane stopped in the doorway, from where one of the teacher's characteristic hopelessly muddled diagrams was visible on the blackboard. She gestured at it.

'It's as tangled as that. Can we talk about it later? I'll make it as easy to explain to you as much as I can.'

'Lunchtime?'

After half a minute, Jane inclined her head. Then they went into class.

Later, over lunch, Jane tried to explain.

'I'm not trying to give you a hard time about it now, but I know you weren't too happy when I started dating Tom.'

Sonny interjected. 'I acted like a jerk, to you and to Tom. That's why I'm trying to be different now.'

'Yeah, well, it's true that my hanging out with Tom has to mean spending less time with you, maybe less than we'd both like, but it's like I told you, it doesn't mean our friendship is less important to me. It's just …'

'One of those things that happens.'

Jane pulled a face. 'I guess. Anyway, it made things easier for me when it seemed like you were going to suspend hostilities with Tom, but …'

Sonny remembers Jane pointing at the board earlier. 'How does Mrs Bennett's diagram come into this?'

'I dunno.' Jane looked glum. 'It's just confusing, like with lots of circles and crosses and arrows all over the place linking them up.'

'Am I a circle or a cross in this analogy?'

'Sorry—I really am sorry—but in this analogy I'm not sure what you are. That just makes it more confusing. The thing is … while I'm working on spending more time with Tom … and you're suggesting we could do that at the hotel, but …'

'I think I'm starting to get it. You want to spend time together, but you're not sure whether the hotel is the right sort of place to spend the right sort of time. I kind of understand. I guess it's easy to think of a hotel as a place full of lots of other people, which you know is not something I would willingly inflict on you any more than I would willingly inflict it on myself. But when you're actually there it's not like that.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. He realized that Jane had been avoiding this conversation because she didn't want to say to him straight out that she wanted to spend time with Tom without Sonny. But he understood that without her saying it, and now that he knew that Jane and Tom were having problems he wanted to act like a friend. All this flashed through his mind in a moment before he continued.

'You remember when you and Tom had a date to meet at the parade?'

Jane nodded. 'But you hooked up with him instead.'

'Hooked up? We were together briefly, but he was looking for you the whole time, and he was still looking for you when I left.'

'Yeah, he found me in the end.' Jane poked at her food.

'Well, you told me that your date with Tom consisted of making fun of people.'

'I told you that you were being simplistic.'

'Anyway, if that's the way you and Tom have fun together, there's no shortage of subjects at the hotel. Fresh ones, too. You could hang out at the pool, for example. There's lots of people making public buffoons out of themselves with energetic horseplay, and that's not even counting my parents. Then there's people who aren't even interested in the water, but are just using it as an excuse for lounging around in public, like Quinn and her Fashion Club cronies—when they're not exploring other ways of exploiting the male staff that they've got twisted around their little fingers. If Quinn can bring in her friends, so-called, as guests, I don't see why I shouldn't do the same. If things haven't been so great with you and Tom lately, maybe a change of scene and somebody new to joke about is just what you need.'

Sonny paused for a reply from Jane, but she just kept looking down at her lunch, so he took another tack.

'Of course, what would I know. Giving you advice about this makes me feel like a fraud. But I know that the time at the hotel seems to have been good for my parents. When they're not hanging around the pool they're spending a lot of time in their room … the word 'rekindling' just came into my mind and I don't want to think about what my parents are doing any more. But when I'm in my room, it's like the Fortress of Solitude. At home I had to see Quinn and my parents sometimes at meals and other odd times, but now I can get all my meals from room service, and if I was abducted by aliens I don't think my family would notice my absence for three days. So if you and Tom wanted to check out the hotel and also have some "couple time", you could come up to my room and then I could go and hang out somewhere else.'

Jane looked up at him. 'Like where?' It sounded almost as if she were challenging him, and after a moment's hesitation he tried to turn it off with a joke about how Tom was surely able to afford to send him out to have some pizza. Jane just kept looking at him, so he felt pressed to come up with other ideas.

'I could go and use the pool myself.' Another thought came to him. 'I never mind spending some time hanging out at the public library. Look, that's not the point. Just think about it. It could be a long time before you have another chance like this to check out a fancy hotel.' Sonny struggled to hide his puzzlement at Jane's reaction, when he was just trying to do something nice for her and Tom.

Jane seemed to pull herself together. 'Yeah, I guess that's true. Look, I promise I'll think about it. It's just that with Tom …' She trailed off again.

'Okay', Sonny said. 'But it really is okay if you want to bring Tom around and even have some time there without me. Promise you'll make sure Tom knows that?'

Jane nodded and looked away again, and they finished lunch in silence. Sonny still didn't know why.

* * *

 **'Mr Morgendorffer? There's** somebody at the desk who wants to see you.'

Sonny had wondered why the phone in his room was ringing. Now he understood.

'Excuse me, but I think that must be a mistake. Mr Morgendorffer is my father.'

Sonny heard muffled noises coming through the phone line, and then the concierge was speaking to him again.

'Am I speaking with Mr Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior?'

Sonny was flummoxed. 'Yes, I suppose so, but … there's somebody there who wants to see me?'

'Yes, a Mr Thomas Sloane.'

At that,Sonny understood. This was Tom and Jane's idea of a joke. 'Okay', he said, 'send them up.'

Minutes later there was a knock at his door. 'Come in', he called. 'I've unlocked it.' The door opened and Tom came through it … and shut it behind him.

'Hey, Sonny.'

Sonny narrowed his eyes. After a moment he spoke.

'Hey, Tom. Where's Jane?'

'Ah, I dropped by her place and she was deep in a creative process which involved power tools. I didn't have my safety goggles with me, so I thought I'd drop round here instead and see if you'd mind showing me the place. Jane told me you invited us both round, and I thought if I took a look while she's busy, it would give us something to talk about when we get together later this evening.'

'Oh.' Sonny looked around. 'Well, here's the room. The bathroom's through there if you want to check it out. I guess it's not so much of a much for somebody who's used to your style of living.'

'No, I can see why you thought Jane and I might like it. There's a pool here too, right?'

'Um … yeah. I can take you down to it if you want to see.'

'I figured if we're going to check out the pool we might as well do it properly. You know, swim a few lengths. I've got my swimsuit on underneath so I can just get undressed here before we go down. Can you lend me a towel?'

Sonny nodded, but he was feeling more and more uncomfortable. He had thought that he and Tom had an understanding. They weren't friends. Sonny was just being nice about his best friend's boyfriend. Sure, they'd spent a little time together, but that was hanging out with Jane. There was that time at the parade, too, but that had been a mixture of happenstance and practical necessity. Was Tom deliberately trying to hang out with him now? Why? That wasn't part of the deal. But when Sonny tried to open his mouth to say so he felt like a saboteur. He thought of Mrs Bennett's diagram, with its tangle of arrows and lines like badly cooked spaghetti. Whatever, he wasn't going to be the cross. Unless it was the circle he wasn't supposed to be. Whichever.

He flexed his scalp muscles in an attempt to clear his mind. It was like being trapped in a Mystik Spiral song. Meanwhile, Tom had begun stripping down to his swimsuit, which was making Sonny even more uncomfortable. He was being reminded of the locker room during gym class, when he still had to take it. He cleared his throat.

'Ah … I'll just get a couple of towels from the bathroom. And I guess I'll grab my swimsuit first and change in there.'

Tom just nodded.

In the bathroom, Sonny carefully adjusted his boardshorts to make sure the piercing in his navel was concealed. He wasn't wearing the ring at the moment—he was long past the stage where he had to keep it in continuously to stop the hole closing up—but nobody new was going to see the place. Certainly not Tom.

Then he came out carrying two towels and they went down to the pool.

Sonny still didn't like it. First Jane acting strangely, and now Tom. Maybe it was because they __were__ breaking up. If so, Sonny hoped they'd patch things together. He'd finally got used to Tom's being a factor and he didn't want weirdness again.

* * *

 **When Jane rang** up to arrange to come round to the hotel with Tom, Sonny naturally assumed that Tom had told her about his earlier visit. Sonny was bewildered when it came out that he hadn't.

Jane wasn't bewildered, she was upset. Which surprised him even more.

'So, were you planning on telling me about this?'

'I just did tell you about it. I don't know what Tom was up to, but I'm not keeping any secrets from you.'

There was a moment's silence at the other end of the line before Jane said, 'Yeah, I guess you wouldn't do that.'

'It doesn't make any sense. Tom must have known you'd find out from me.'

'I don't know what Tom's thinking.' Jane sighed. 'What did you two get up to, anyway?'

'Get up to? He checked out the room … we chatted about a book I've been reading, __Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook__ , by Edward Luttwak …'

'Sounds like your sort of book.'

'Well, Tom seemed to be interested in hearing about it, unless he was just being polite.'

Jane sighed again. 'No, he probably __was__ really interested. Anything else?'

'We went to the pool so he could check that out as well.'

'You went swimming?' Sonny listened as Jane breathed audibly. 'Did you show him your navel ring?'

 _ _Stop it__ , Sonny thought. __You're freaking me out.__ 'Of course not', he said. 'I don't have it in at the moment. And I'm not showing the piercing, ring in or ring out, to __anybody__. My family still doesn't know about it, they would still freak if they did, and they could show up at the hotel pool at any time. And I wouldn't do it even if it weren't for that.' __Please. Get a grip. Somebody has to.__ 'Look, I don't know what the problem is, but don't think that Tom and I are becoming bosom buddies. I thought if I wasn't at odds with him it made things easier for you?' _At least that would make sense._

'If you want to use logic.' Now Jane sounded not cranky, but depressed. 'I don't know. Sometimes I feel like a third wheel in my own relationship, but I don't know whether that makes any sense.'

'Crosses, circles, a tangle of arrows, and wheels?'

'Maybe.' There was a long pause, but the tone in which Jane had uttered that one word made Sonny feel she had something more to say but was still working out what it was. Eventually, she did continue: 'I don't know what to say to you. I hate being like this.'

'I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe you should try something new to break out of the tangle. You rang this time to arrange to come round with Tom, so do that. And I will get out of your way. I've figured out where I'll go while you're here. I'll let you into the room and then I'll go. If you want to go to the pool, or anywhere else in the hotel, and any of the staff make problems for you, just say you're here with the Morgendorffers. I'll fix that with my parents in case they get asked.'

Jane was worried about Jake and Helen's reactions if they thought that Sonny was arranging for Tom and Jane to be alone in his room. Sonny had thought of that. He'd let them think that Tom and Jane might just be going __to the pool__ without him, but not explain that while they were in the hotel he was going to be somewhere else entirely.

* * *

 **Sonny says goodbye to** Jane and Tom and starts walking towards the elevator when he runs in to a bathing suit clad Stacy Rowe. "Oh, um, hey." He steps on the elevator with her.

"Hi, um, Sonny." She looks at him for a second before looking away. "Are you ok after the fire?"

"Yes." He is uncomfortable being trapped with a Fashion Fiend.

"I'm glad you are. Quinn seemed ok too but she never really talks about stuff not fashion. You're more, deep, I guess."

 _Deep? What does she know about deep?_ Sonny watches the light on the panel change from floor number to floor number.

"How are you liking your own room? Even though you're a boy and she's a girl you're brother and sister. They could have put you in a double bed room."

Sonny slowly turns to Stacy. "You know I'm her brother?"

"Of course. You're ok, for a brother. Sandi's brothers are like, pure terrors."

"I'm, surprised. She tries as hard as she can to make sure people don't know we're related."

"I don't know why. All the times we've talked you've always been super nice! Much nicer than any of the boys I dated."

"Because I'm not trying to date you."

"Exactly! You have Jane."

Sonny stays calm. Stacy wasn't the first person to confuse his friendship with Stacy. "I don't. She's just a friend."

Stacy fidgets nervously. "Oh, but, uh..."

"Just friends. I don't date."

"Really? What about like, ten years from now?"

He shrugs his shoulders. "I'll worry about it then."

"Well, um, you are super nice I'm sure any girl would be happy to date you."

He can't help but raise an eyebrow. "Even the more popular ones?"

"Well, maybe not Sandi, or Tiffany. They would laugh and throw me out of the Fashion Club if I even brought it up. They can always get hotter dates than me. And they don't understand why I tried to be just friends with Brock or Chris or..." She lists off several names.

Sonny starts to get exasperated. "Look, I'm busy."

"Ok, but like, maybe we could talk later? Over pizza?"

"Why?"

Stacy bites her lower lip. "I, um, had a fire when I was younger. It was really scary. Now that you and Quinn went through the same thing we can talk about it!" Stacy notices the entire time he keeps eye contact and never looks at her body. "If you want to. Quinn says she's fine with it but I think she's just hiding what she really feels."

"Wow, that almost sounded like... Depth. You're different from the rest of the Fashion Fiends." Sonny's eyes go wide as he realizes what he just called her.

"Fashion Fiends?" Stacy laughs. "I'm lucky they even let me talk to them sometimes. I can be such an idiot when it comes to spring fashion." She surprises him by hugging him as the elevator doors open. "I need to go. But let me know if you want to talk about the fire or stuff!" She skips along merrily.

Sonny exits the elevator and leaves the hotel as Stacy goes towards the pool entrance.

 **Sonny knocks on the door of a very familiar home. 'Hey, Sonny. Janey's not home.'**

'Hey, Trent. I know. Jane's over at my hotel, checking it out, with Tom. I was hoping I'd find you home and free for a chat while she's out. I think it might be important.'

Trent remained relaxed as ever, but Sonny knew him well enough to see that he was pausing for longer than was usual before he said, 'Sure, come on in.'

Sonny followed Trent inside and they sat down on the couch.

Without saying anything—without, to be honest, giving any sign of metabolic activity at the waking level—Trent gave Sonny the time and the space to put his words into, when he was ready. Sonny knew Trent was alert in his own completely unchallenging way. Sonny rested one hand on his own midsection, feeling his navel ring through the fabric of his clothes, and gathered himself to speak.

'Jane says that things haven't been going too well between her and Tom.'

'Yeah.'

'She mentioned that to you?'

'No, but I'm a musician. I'm very sensitive to shifts in mood.'

'Oh.' Sonny shifted slightly in his seat. 'Well, Jane's been in a strange mood that I don't understand. She pretty much said the same to me herself. She doesn't know what to say about it, and I don't know how to describe it either, but I thought maybe you might have picked up on something. I know you and Jane are close.'

'You wouldn't be asking me to talk with you behind Jane's back, would you?' Trent still seemed perfectly comfortable. He gave no sign in look or tone that he was rebuking Sonny, but Sonny felt his conscience prick him.

'I don't think that's what I was doing. I don't know what's happening, but I don't want it to be my fault.'

'Nobody said it was, did they? You wouldn't do anything to hurt Janey, would you?'

'Not unless she grew long red hair and began keeping a lip gloss database.' Sonny recognized Trent's look of incomprehension. 'Sorry, in-joke.'

'Oh.' Then Trent took on an unusually serious look. 'It sounds like whatever is happening is feeling hard for you. But you know Janey can look after herself. You need to be sure you know what's in your own mind and your own heart, Sonny.'

 _ _Now Trent's starting to freak me out. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.__ 'Well, thanks for talking with me, Trent. I guess I better be going now.' Sonny stood up. He felt awkward and wanted to say something more. 'I'll think about what you said.'

'Hey, any time.' Trent stood up and walked Sonny to the door. As Sonny left Trent gave him another serious look. 'I hope you figure out what, who, you need to figure out.'

 **Sonny did need to talk with** someone and _someone_ had volunteered. Of course, it had been hard to get Stacy alone to ask her. It took an _accidental_ run in with her between classes and a passing of a note.

Since he knew people would be there that he didn't want seeing, he asked Stacy to meet him at Pizza Forest instead.

"Wow, this place hasn't changed in years!" He sees the light and excitement in her eyes. "Too bad they don't have cheeseless pizza."

"Uh, sure." He watches as she strips the cheese off of her pizza slice. "You said you had a fire when you were younger."

She sips her soda before replying. "I was eight. It was so scary." She takes a bite out of her pizza. "I had nightmares for months. I still do, some times."

He sees the look in her eye. "Hearing about ours brought them back, didn't it?" She nods in response. "Sorry."

"It isn't your fault. I want to talk with, someone, about it but can't. None of my friends would..." She pauses for a second before going back to her soda.

"Care?"

"No, but, like, listen. They're my friends but they don't care about stuff like that."

"Then they don't sound like real friends."

They sit and eat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. Even the people dressed as animal mascots avoided their booth.

When Sonny finishes his slice he looks back at Stacy. "I'm sorry. That was rude to say."

"It was honest." She nibbles at the crust that was left of her slice. "You're honest. That's like, really hard to find, and stuff." He sees her smile weakly. "Thanks. I actually feel a little better."

He smirks. "I thought I was the one who was supposed to talk about the fire."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry."

"I'm actually ok with it. It isn't like my childhood home went up in flames. The fire department got there quickly."

"You got lucky." Stacy sets the crust down half eaten. "Um, thanks for eating with me." Stacy reaches in to a fashionable periwinkle purse and pulls out a ten. "I think this is the first time I've been with a boy and had to pay for myself."

"I don't pay for my friends." Sonny blinks a couple times as he realizes what he just said. "Or for my sister's friends." He gets his own ten out.

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Fire' by Peggy Nicoll**_**

 **A/N Ok, I copy/pasted from FF, and then edited it a bit. I removed some stuff from Other J-D, added my own, entire sections or some times just a word or two. Again I've never done any thing like this before but I had these ideas after reading Not So Different and wanted to write it out. Thankfully Other J-D gave me permission!**


	2. Chapter 2

****James The Lesser Presents His Version of the Daria Gender Flip Based off of Not So Different.****

 ** **Not So Different Is a Story by The Other J-D. I read it and enjoyed it but had my own ideas for how the end of season four-Rest of Series could go. I asked permission and he granted it so I am going to do my own version of the show starting at S4 E12 Fire! His story is really good and I hope those who haven't given it a chance does! It will mostly be the same but a few variations thrown in for my ideas.**** ** __** ** **I don't know exactly how to do an idea like this so this will be done by trial and error.****

 ** **And now the biggest changes to be made... The whole reason I wanted to do this as the ideas came to me.****

 ** _ **S4 E 13**_**

 ** _ **Surprise!**_**

 **Sonny felt uncomfortable as Jane came out** of her closet with a top that screamed _look at me_ with shorts that matched the bright red color of the top. "What do you think?"

Sonny shook his head. "Why does my opinion matter? I don't care about clothes. I don't care what you wear. Ask Tom."

She growls a little in frustration. "I already told you, this is for Tom. I want to wear some thing different. Some thing he hasn't seen before."

"Then wear any thing you have in your closet. I don't care and have no opinion."

She poses trying to look like a model on the cover of a magazine. "Really? Nothing I could wear that would get your attention?"

He glares at her smirk. "Not unless you came out in something like Quinn would wear."

Jane rolls her eyes. "I want to wear something Tom hasn't seen and still date me not run away screaming." Jane goes back in to her closet to change again.

 **Sonny gets home from Jane's** and sees Stacy in the kitchen getting celery and carrot sticks. "The others upstairs?"

She nods. "How are you?"

"Ok, I guess. Jane is acting weird."

"Oh, how?"

"She's spent the past hour changing outfits trying to look different for her boyfriend. She kept asking me about what ever she wore but I just don't care."

"Um, ok. Some people are like that, I guess. I mean, no one really cares what you wear so why should you care, right?" He nods and she smiles. "But people care about what we wear so we have to look good."

"Why do people care what you or the other Fashion..." He was about to say fiends but stopped. "Club wear?"

"Because we're popular. I mean sure, Quinn and Sandi are way more than me, I am?" She looks at him for help.

"Me works in that case."

"Than me but still I'm a member so I represent the rest."

Sonny looks at the time and at the fridge. "Well, you enjoy your rabbit food. I'm eating some thing real." He walks past her to grab a bag of chips.

"Stacy! Where are you with the snacks!"

Stacy flinches at Sandi's yell. "Sorry!" She hurries for the stairs with the celery and carrot sticks.

 **With the music coming from Jane's room,** Sonny wasn't sure whether Jane and Tom heard him when he called out to them. He knocked on the door: no response. He pushed it open.

They hadn't heard him.

He blushed as he realized they hadn't noticed him even after he came in to the room. Jane and Tom were like two boxers in a clinch and all he could do was wait for the referee to shout, 'Break!'

He must have made some sort of noise, and they must have heard it, because suddenly Tom moved backwards. He and Jane both looked at Sonny with different embarrassed faces and made different noises. Jane turned the music off. Nobody knew what to say.

Sonny supposed it would be polite for him to apologize. There wasn't really anything for Tom and Jane to be embarrassed about. Jane put his feelings into words, more or less.

'No biggie. You had to learn about kissing some time.'

Tom, putting a congratulatory hand on Jane's arm, explained that he'd been carried away by the genius of her latest work. Jane turned an easel around dramatically to display it. It was a stylized jungle scene, and through the foliage Jane's head could be seen, only her hair was tiger-striped, more or less, in blonde and her native black.

Sonny said he liked it, but he couldn't help wondering whether it was a cry for help. Tom suggested both reactions might fit. Jane conveyed the slightest hint of irritation that they didn't understand.

'The lady or the tiger—now you don't have to choose', she said.

'Does this mean you'll be ordering the pizza with entrails?' Sonny joked.

Jane responded with great seriousness, and already Sonny had a sick feeling.

'This is going to be my new look. And __you're__ assisting me in the procedure.'

Sonny looked down uneasily at Jane's finger pointing at him, and then across at Tom, who was smiling. Whatever his girlfriend might have in mind for Sonny didn't seem to bother him.

It turned out that what Jane had in mind for Sonny was for him to help dye her hair to create blonde stripes like the ones in her painting. He'd been afraid of something like that. He tried several times to persuade her of his complete unsuitability for the task, but she refused to let him off.

"Look, give me a day or two to think about it."

"No way." She wanted to create an effect, and the procedure pretty much required her to have somebody else to assist. It would spoil the effect to ask Tom to do it (given that he was the intended prime beneficiary) and, as she said, who else was she going to ask? Trent? That rhetorical question shut Sonny up for a while. "You're coming with me to the store to find the right color, too." He trailed after Jane to the pharmacy, sadly but resignedly, to buy the hair dye.

He took some slight comfort from the fact that Jane was as appalled as he by the marketing nightmare that was the range of blonde hair dyes on offer. There was a definite rural or agricultural theme, with most of the colors being named to evoke images of fields full of beautifully golden grains or other plants. How were they supposed to choose? He took the opportunity of their shared floundering to suggest again that Jane get help from somebody more suitable, like the girl behind the counter. He figured twenty dollars and a bag of doughnuts would do the trick.

'You know, Sonny, not everybody in the world conducts themselves by the same ruthlessly mercenary principles as you and your family.'

'That's why I threw in the doughnuts. Give the deal a personal touch.'

Jane saw right through Sonny's evasion. She could tell that he was still trying to get out of the mission she had assigned him, and she made it clear that she was listening to no excuses about his lack of aptitude for activities like dyeing hair and painting toenails.

'Look, Sonny, this is the kind of thing that teens do together to cement their friendships. Don't you want to cement our friendship?'

'It's teen girls that do those things together, I think you'll find I'm not a teen girl.'

Jane looked steadily at him. 'And that's supposed to make a difference to __us__ how?'

Sonny couldn't meet her gaze. Jane wanted to look good for Tom. He told himself that he understood that, he really did, he didn't need to be a girl for that. And he'd already decided that if Tom went away it wasn't going to be because of him. Should he be worried that if he did botch the hair dye job it would make Tom go away? That didn't make sense. Tom wasn't like that. So why was he still uncomfortable? It was because Jane was being odd about it. She had a rational case that he couldn't assail, but he felt there was something else going on in her mind behind it.

Sonny sighed as they looked at more colors. "I have, some thing, to do tonight. Can we do this tomorrow?"

Jane crosses her arms as she stares at him. "You're not getting out of this."

"I know. I'm just, busy, tonight. I promise tomorrow night I'll do my best not to mangle your hair." _I hope._ "I swear."

"You better, Morgendorffer." The two continue to shop for the right farming, er, color, for Jane's hair.

 **Sonny gets home and sits down on** the couch thinking. "I could fake being sick. Or lick the toilet and make myself sick for real." He stares at his reflection in the television screen. "Except I'd get better, eventually."

Quinn storms in with an armful of magazines. "Can't talk, blushathon coming up, must prepare." She goes up the stairs balancing the magazines carefully.

Sonny wants to beat his head against the wall. "I can't ask Quinn." He sighs as he gets off the couch. "Only one person I can." He walks to the kitchen and grabs the phone. It takes a few seconds for him to think of the number.

"Hello? Quinn?"

"No, uh, Sonny. Stacy, I have a favor to ask."

"Yes?"

Sonny is a little put off by her tone. It sounded... He wasn't sure. "My friend Jane wants to dye her hair. She wants me to do it for her but I can't. I simply can't. I'll pay you, twenty plus a box of donuts, or a carton of carrots, whatever."

"Your friend is trying to look better! I mean, not that she looks bad. But she could do a lot better if she gave a little effort." Sonny drops his head on the counter with a loud thud. "Hello?"

"Hair, just help her dye her hair."

"Ok, sure! And I'll do it for free. Helping others look good is what the Fashion Club is all about!"

Sonny mumbles an insult under his breath before responding. "Thank you. Meet me at my house tomorrow after school."

"Ok!"

 **When Sonny showed up at Casa Lane with** Stacy, Jane threw a fit.

After grabbing Sonny by the arm and dragging him through the doorway she slammed the door shut leaving Stacy outside. "Why did you bring a Fashion Fiend here?!"

"Because I, unlike you, am thinking rationally. I don't do hair. She does. She'll do it for free with out any of the bitching that you'll get from me. And she'll do it right."

Jane starts to tap her foot. "What makes you think you aren't capable of painting some stripes?"

"I'm not the artist. Jane, please, let Stacy do this. She'll do it right, make your hair look good, and I'll pay you to let her do it."

"Twenty and donuts?"

"Ten and a pizza."

Jane's scowl morphs in to a smile. "You really didn't want to do this."

Sonny relaxes as the tension passes. "Don't, can't, won't. Your pick." He turns and opens the door. "Thanks for waiting."

"No problem! Hair care is super important." She looks at Jane's hair. "What kind of conditioner do you use?"

"The kind that comes in the cheapest bottle."

Stacy makes a face. "Well, at least you use it even if it is cheap. Ok, we'll need..." Stacy takes over as Sonny steps back and let's the two teen girls go to the kitchen.

Wanting nothing to do with it, Sonny excused himself and went home.

 **Sonny sees Jane at school the next** day surrounded by people. "This is different." Feeling uncomfortable with the situation, he left Jane alone and went to class.

When Jane sat down across from him at lunch, he looked at her hair. "Looks, different."

"Gee, thanks." Sonny is confused by her reaction.

"Did you expect me to fawn over it?"

"No, not you." Jane grumbles and the only word Sonny understood was _Tom._

"Did he not like it?"

Jane sighs. "After a brief comment he went to being... Him." She pokes at the mash potatoes with her fork. "I even dressed up. I wanted to get a reaction out of him and got nothing but three words."

"What?"

"Oh, that's cool." Jane stabs the potatoes. "I swear I could walk in to his house, on fire, and he'd just ask me not to burn any thing too valuable."

Sonny feels just as uncomfortable as he did when she was surrounded by people. "Others seem to like it."

"The two closest guys to me and I got five words combined."

"I don't count. You're just a friend." He sees the look Jane gives him. "What?"

"Nothing, just, thinking." He ignores her looks and starts in on his food.

 **Sonny walked home from school thinking there was still some secret he wasn't being let into, and found Tom parked in** front of his house. Sonny asked him crossly what he was doing there.

'I wanted to talk to you. Your sister said you weren't home so I figured I'd wait out here.'

Sonny figured it was only polite to invite Tom inside, but Tom had been frightened off by the girls rubbing stuff on each others cheeks and making animal noises. Sonny recognized the description of a Blushathon, and that it would only get worse. He didn't fancy going inside for it either. At Tom's suggestion, he got in the car. He decided it would be okay if they weren't actually going anywhere.

'Did you want to talk about Jane?' he said.

'Nope.'

'If you don't want to talk about Jane, then what game are you playing?' Sonny said, wishing he'd never got into the car. Close quarters were always dangerous. He turned his head to scan his escape route. 'Apart from Jane, I have nothing to talk about with you.'

'Why is everybody so mad at __me__?'

'Why? __Why?__ ' Sonny decided in that moment that, Jane or no Jane, the time had come when he was really going to open up to this character.'Because I moved to this town and I knew immediately I'd be a total outcast. And in the one moment of good luck I've had in my entire life, I met another outcast who I could really be friends with and not have to feel completely alone. And then you came along and screwed the whole thing up! You twisted me around to be nice to you on her account but everything's gone to hell anyway, and I don't even understand why!'

Tom was not antagonized by Sonny's unleashed hostility. He seemed happy now to talk more freely, and more vehemently too. 'It's not that hard to understand. I met a girl I thought was cool and I went out with her for a while. We started to get bored with each other. It happens all the time and it's nobody's fault.'

He sounded convincing, and Sonny wanted to believe, but—'Oh yeah? Would you still be bored with her if I weren't here to get in the way?'

'Probably', said Tom. 'And more to the point', he said, becoming more emphatic, 'she'd be bored with me. It's got nothing to do with you.' He shook his head decisively.

'Fine. But if you're breaking up with my best friend, Tom Sloane, then we've got nothing to talk about and no reason even to be in the same space.' Sonny started to get out of the car.

Tom reached out a hand, put it on Sonny's shoulder, and said, 'Wait.'

Physically, the touch of Tom's hand on Sonny's shoulder was light. It could never have functioned as any sort of physical restraint. But it still jerked Sonny out of one world and into another.

Since his first serious exchange with Tom, when Tom had just started seeing Jane and wanted to straighten things out with Sonny from the beginning, Sonny had been living in a world where, despite all his prior experience of life, he could, in a particular sense and within limits, trust Tom.

The physical contact snapped him out of that world, back into a world he was more familiar with, where people only approached him physically for one reason. In that familiar world, he knew what came next after somebody put a hand on him. He went limp with recognition. It wasn't something to resist, it wasn't something to argue about. It was just something to be confirmed.

He asked Tom to confirm what came next.

Tom reacted to his simple question with an exclamation of utter astonishment, as if __Sonny__ were the one who had jerked __him__ into a completely different world, one that was totally alien to him. Sonny couldn't take that seriously; he'd heard it __all__ before.

' _ _What did you say?__ '

' _ _I said,__ are you going to hit me?' Sonny repeated. 'I've told you about this. Some guy gets mad at me for something that's not my fault, and he grabs me by the shoulder, and the next thing I know his fists are thudding into me. You told me you're not that type, but so what?' Sonny didn't even bother trying to shake off Tom's grip.

'I can't believe you'd think I'd hit you. Do you think so little of me?"

"I don't think of you at all except when Jane is involved."

"She is your friend. I still like her, I really do. We just got bored.

"That's great. I'm going inside now."

Tom keeps his hand on Sonny. "Wait, please, can we talk? She talks about you all the time and I know we aren't friends but you are her friend. I don't want to hurt her. She is cool, and smart, and her looks don't hurt either."

"Then break up with her, or don't. It doesn't matter to me."

"It should since she's your friend."

Sonny shrugs his hand off. "Then I'll talk with her, not you." Sonny heard himself say, 'I gotta go', and then he was getting out of the car and fleeing up the path to the house. But there was no sanctuary anywhere. The Blushathon was in full swing and he knew the house would be infested with Fashion Fiends for several more hours.

Tom looks up at the house and sighs before driving off.

 **As Sonny broods in his room some one knocks** on the door. "What?" It is Stacy. "Come in."

She looks around his room. "Wow, your room is..." Sonny waits for the insult. "Cool."

This perks his interest, a little. "What do you want? The Blushathon is down the hall."

Stacy looks down at her shoes. "I know but, um, there is a movie thingy coming out on Saturday and... "

Sonny rolls his eyes. "Romantic Comedy 125? Action Blow em Up 93?"

"No, like, an artistic one. Black and white and stuff. The others would never go but you're smart you might go. Explain what the symbology is."

Sonny wants to correct her and say symbolism but the art film was actually on his list of things to see. Jane would never go. Tom might as he had talked about the art film from last week. But he was not going to invite Tom. "I'll see about it. You pay for yourself, I pay for myself."

"Ok, I'll uh, call, or see you at school."

Sonny is surprised to hear her say that. "Where others might see you with me?"

"It is ok to talk with a friend." Stacy leaves.

S **onny realizes his parents** weren't around, either. His mother had a huge case on, her biggest yet, and his father had been busy too with some more consultancy work for that hotel they'd stayed at recently, Le Grand. (Bobby the bellhop had been doing expensive favors for Quinn with a fake story about a non-existent uncle at the hotel giving permission, billing the Morgendorffers, then breaking into the hotel computer system to cancel the charges. When this came out, Jake had seized the opportunity to convince them that as well as improved security they needed a new marketing campaign to offset the bad news stories, and that with his inside knowledge of the incident there was nobody better to handle it.)

He wasn't sure what to think. If Tom and Jane broke up it would make his life easier. Wouldn't it? She wouldn't make him look at the different outfits she tried on or try and make him dye her hair. But she might be hurt, miserable, and looking to talk about it. Wouldn't a friend be the first person she turned to?

And speaking of friends... What was that with Stacy? When did they become friends? So he was nice to her the few times they talked. He had no reason to be mean or bully her like others did to him. It didn't make them friends.

Time must have kept on passing, but Sonny lost the sense of it. Maybe he slept in snatches that night or maybe he didn't. When he was conscious he stared at the ceiling, which seemed to be going round and round in rhythm with his circling thoughts.

He got hungry, after having skipped dinner, and stumbled down to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and couldn't decide on what to eat. He couldn't stay there. He found himself back in his bedroom, glancing at the clock. It was three in the morning. He lay flat on his back again, feeling as if it would always be three in the morning.

He never remembered noticing that morning's sunrise, or hearing his family stir. His parents were both too busy to notice his disappearance, and Quinn would surely never care. He staid in bed wondering what the hell had happened to his world.

When he came to Lawndale he figured it would be like Highland. He'd be alone, bullied, beat up, and miserable. Jane... Made him feel less miserable. He made himself a comfortable existence. Yes he still got beat up but not as often. Bullied but a lot less. Then Tom... And the fire. And Stacy. Why the hell did these other people have to mess up what he made? Why did Jane have to notice some one like Tom? Sure he and Tom were a lot a like and hell, if they had met first, he might have made friends with him. But he hadn't, he'd met Jane. Jane was his friend. He didn't want to lose her. But if she broke up with Tom she'd want to talk about it. He wasn't sure he was up for that.

He had heard about it, even seen it in movies and television. They'd break up, she'd need to cry about it, and she'd turn to her friend. He was the only one she had. He'd never dealt with any thing like that. What if he said or did the wrong thing? If Jane stopped being his friend he'd be alone, again. He couldn't lose her.

 **The next information from** external reality that he registered consciously was the doorbell ringing.

He could tell from the rhythm that it was the person who would notice his disappearance. He glanced at the clock. She must have come here after school. Had she phoned during the day? He might have failed to hear, screening out the noise as intended for somebody else.

He was halfway down the stairs when the doorbell gave the same familiar ring again.

Then he was standing at the open door with the doorknob in his hand and Jane Lane was staring at him.

'Sonny? Are you all right?'

They were sitting together on the couch. Sonny looked round. One of them must have shut the door. Jane spoke again.

'When you weren't at school today, I didn't think … you look like you could use a whole week of mental health days. Sorry! Sorry! I don't know what to say here! Whatever it is, compadre, you can talk to me, can't you?'

Jane was reaching forward a tentative hand. Sonny had to speak before it connected with his arm. His voice echoed from the bottom of an empty haunted well.

'I talked with Tom. I didn't mean to. I still don't understand. He's going to break...'

Jane was up, back, away from him. 'I knew this would happen! I knew it!'

Sonny came to himself and stared at her. "I'm sorry? Do you need to, uh, talk? Jane didn't answer. 'You could talk with Trent."

'That's not what this is about, Sonny! He's going to break up with me and he told you first? What the hell?'

"I don't know. I can talk, if you want, I guess." _And hope I don't screw up._

Jane half-turned towards the door. 'I can't talk about this now, Sonny. Why in the hell did he go to you first? The hell was he thinking? Why didn't you tell me? You could have called or told me at school. Why did I have to come over here to find out!'

Sonny was still staring at the door that had slammed behind Jane when it opened again and Quinn came through it.

'Sonny? Are you all right?'

* * *

 **Incredibly, all Tom said when he answered the** door to Jane's ring was 'Oh' and then 'Hi!' Jane stared at him in outraged disbelief. 'Oh, hi', she echoed, and then shouted ' _ _Go to hell!__ ', before she leaped at him, hammering his chest with both fists. Over his cries of protest she shouted 'How could you? _ _How could you?__ '

At least he didn't pretend not to know what that was about. 'I didn't plan it that way! But Sonny said …'

' _ _Sonny__ said! I thought he didn't even know!' Jane took a step back.

'He didn't! It was my fault!'

Jane turned her head angrily away. 'Oh, don't give me that!'

'He was taken by surprise! But I was the one who screwed up!'

Jane realized she'd been waving her hands around wildly. She folded her arms. 'Now what?' She threw Tom a challenging look.

'I don't know', he said. 'Do you want to hear what happened?'

Jane didn't want to sit in Tom's house, so they walked silently out to his back yard and sat down on an old wooden swing set, looking away from each other.

'I know what happened. You told Sonny you were going to break up with me. He wasn't at school today, so I went round to his place to check on him. I didn't suspect anything, he just came right out and told me.'

"I'm sorry."

Jane looked across at Tom briefly. 'How did you ever get close enough in the first place?'

'I went round to his place to talk to him. He didn't even want to get in the car. I needed to talk to some one who knew you and he knows you best. Maybe I was upset with you because of you ringing me up with all those crazy accusations …'

"I wouldn't say it was crazy to think you were going to break up with me. I thought you would break up with me, you know, through me. Not Sonny."

"I didn't mean to tell him that. I just wanted to talk. There's nothing wrong with talking, is there?'

Jane tilted her head skeptically. 'And you only wanted to talk?'

Tom looked away again. 'I thought so. I guess I might have been kidding myself. I'm a real idiot. There's no question about that.'

'Who's arguing? You might as well go on.'

'We sat in my car and all he wanted to talk about was you, and how he'd tried to be nice to me on __your__ account, and how things had still got screwed up and he didn't know why. He left as soon as he could and went inside. He didn't want to talk with me if you and I were breaking up …'

'What made him think we were breaking up? I told him things weren't great, I didn't say we were breaking up. What did __you__ say to him?'

'I was telling him that whatever was happening it wasn't his fault! I could tell him that much, and he needed to hear it. I told him we were both getting bored with each other. You know it's true. We weren't going anywhere. We were about to break up anyway.'

They looked at each other, and then away again. Jane said, 'Yeah.' She sighed. 'Go on. Let's finish this.'

'He didn't want to talk with me and he started to get out of the car, so I put my hand on his shoulder, and __he__ thought … he __said__ he thought …'

'… that you were going to hit him? Don't look surprised, I know what he's like.'

'Well, that's what he said. I couldn't believe he'd think I would do that …'

'He asked you not to hit him?' Jane shook her head. 'No, wait, he wouldn't do that. He asked you whether you were going to hit him?'

'That's what he he said. I thought he knew me better than that. Or you would have told him what I was like.'

Jane said irritably. 'I may not be as smart as Sonny, but you never give me the credit I deserve. He wouldn't care what you were like. He tried his best to be nice to you and that's it.'

Tom shrugged and sighed. 'I should have broken up with you first, that's all.'

'You got that right. Look. All that time, you did like me, right?'

'Are you crazy?'

'I don't know. Am I?'

Tom winced and the corners of his mouth turned down. 'I know this situation right now is my fault and I brought it on myself, and I'm sorry. But I did, still do, like you. Some times it isn't enough, is it?'

'No.' Jane just nodded sadly. "Too bad."

'But it started because I really like you, Jane. You're smart and you're funny, you have a great attitude … you do everything on your own terms. You're, like, from a cooler world.'

Jane looked up. 'I am, aren't I?'

'You really are.'

A momentary smile flickered across Jane's face. 'Too bad __you're__ such a dork.'

'Yeah, I should have kept the break clean and not dragged Sonny into it.' Tom looked straight at her. 'It's all true what I said.'

'Well, that's good.' She sighs. "He wasn't. He looked kind of like a zombie. And not the fun kind. Like he hadn't changed his clothes since yesterday. Or washed. Maybe not even moved.'

'What?'

'I don't know. He seems to be taking our breakup harder than we are." Tom stays silent. "I should probably talk to him. I doubt his family will help him."

"It sounds like he has more on his mind than you and I breaking up."

She had heard it before and always denied it. Now... "Maybe he does like me as more than a friend. Even more reason I should talk to him."

* * *

 **'Sonny? Are you all right?'**

It had been Quinn coming through the door. Now she was looming over him. He still recognized her. She was asking him what had happened.

Right. Something had happened, all right. As she crouched down in front of him, peering into his face, he said, 'Quinn? If your best friend were going out with somebody and they broke up and she came to you talk, what would you do?'

'We don't have boys break up with us, we break up with them. Why?"

"Jane and Tom are breaking up. Tom told me before he told her. I know, as her friend, I should talk with her about it. I have no idea what to actually say though. She's my friend and if I say the wrong thing what the hell do I do? I'm not cut up for finding a new friend."

"Why do you care so much? Gah, it isn't like you two are dating. Or do you..."

"No, she's just a friend. My only friend. I don't have any one else. Lawndale has been far easier than I ever thought it would be because of her. With out her..."

"Are you sure you don't like her as more? You seemed pretty jealous of Tom."

"I wasn't jealous I was..." Sonny shakes a little. "I wasn't jealous. I don't know what it was. I just need to think some more."

Quinn stares at him when she gets an idea. "You keep thinking."

As she leaves Sonny wonders where she was going. She had just gotten home and hadn't gone upstairs to change or any thing else.

 **'Hey, Janey!' Trent called from the door.** 'Sonny's sister's here to see you!'

Jane looked up. __Quinn? What was Quinn doing here? This has to be the worst timing ever.__ There was only one way to deal with it, through. She levered herself upright and made her way towards the door.

Quinn met her halfway, and Jane told her at once that whatever Quinn wanted, she really wasn't up to talking about it at the moment.

Quinn said, 'I know it must be hard for you being totally hurt like that. My cousin, um, brother, is like, taking your breakup really hard.'

Jane took a step backward. 'So … you know about that.'

'It's not the kind of thing he keeps secret. He told you, didn't he? I wouldn't have, I think it's crazy, but then that's crazy Sonny for you, isn't it? It's all those books he reads. If Sandi's ex was going to break up with her and told me first, I wouldn't tell her. Why would I want to do that?'

Jane cut her off. 'You didn't come round here to give me Quinn Morgendorffer's introductory lesson on sneaking round behind your friends' backs, did you.'

Normally when Quinn was caught out getting carried away like that, she giggled. Jane noticed that she didn't.

'Sorry. No, I came round here because if it did happen to me, even though I don't have a steady boyfriend, I wouldn't be like, super mad at the other person..' When Jane said nothing, Quinn carried on. 'Of course, just because I __said__ that wouldn't have to mean it was true, because there might be more important reasons to make up with my best friend than just some stupid boy. I mean, if you break up with a boy, that's it, you can't go back, because that just makes you look cheap, but if you have a fight with your best friend, you can always make up, because that's how it works when you're best friends, you fight and then you make up and then that makes you best friends. So if you've, like, broken up with Tom, well, that's over, but if you've had a fight with Sonny, well, that's not like breaking up with a boy, even though Sonny actually is a boy, but he's, well, you know, your friend. I mean, and so it's not like you were ever dating, not that you were anyway, but now if you make up with him it's not like making up with a boyfriend, it's like making up with a best friend, which you two are, so, maybe you should think about it? I know I would be mad if I had a steady boyfriend and he told Sandi he was going to break up with me and she didn't tell me but I'd make up with her. Sonny might not know that, because he's never had a friend before, and maybe you haven't either, so maybe you don't know that either.'

This time when Quinn paused for breath, Jane held up both hands to stem the flow for a moment while she gathered herself. Then she said, 'So the only reason you've come round here today is out of selfless concern for me. And your … distant cousin.'

Now it was Quinn who took a moment to answer. 'Today, Sonny's my brother and I don't care who knows it. But I'm only his sister. He still needs his best friend.'

Jane pulled a face. 'If it matters that much to you, I didn't tell him that I never wanted to see him again. In fact, I already went round to your place to talk to him, even though I didn't know what I wanted to say. But there was nobody home.'

'When I got home, he seemed like a zombie. Maybe he didn't know it was you.'

'Maybe." Jane squared her shoulders. 'Thanks. I already knew I kind of had to talk to him again. Tom told me too.'

'That's the other reason I came round. I need to know about this Tom. Can you give me his address?'

Jane couldn't help it. She felt like grinning again. 'You're going round to see Tom? I wish I could get to watch. You have to promise to tell me about it afterwards.'

* * *

 _ _ **Nobody told me how rich this Tim was, I mean Tom**__ **, Quinn thought** to herself as she waited for somebody to answer the doorbell. The house and the grounds were amazing. No wonder Tom didn't go to Lawndale High.

The boy who answered the door, now that she took the time to size him up, didn't look too bad either, although he obviously paid as little attention to his clothes as Sonny did. She was still thinking about how his appearance could be improved with a little effort as she launched herself into speech with practiced technique before he could get a word in.

'Hi, I'm Sonny's sister Quinn. You must be Tom.'

'Um … I'm not sure what you think you've heard …'

'I heard you went to Sonny instead of Jane. Told him you were going to break up with her before you actually did. Being her best friend he didn't know how to handle this and didn't tell her until the next day. Of course finding out that way pissed her off.'

Tom stammered a little before responding. "I get it, it was bad on my part. She has every right to be mad at me."

'Not you, Sonny. Did you really think breaking up with her through her best friend would leave him out of it? It just sucked him in to the middle of it! Understand?'

Tom blinked and nodded.

"If you ever have to break up with any one again don't you dare do it through their friend. I can't believe guys are this stupid! But you hurt Jane and Sonny and those two, I don't know, have some thing. Even if Sonny doesn't realize it yet. If they stop being friends or what ever, just know, I know where you live."

He simply nods as she storms away.

* * *

 **Sonny heard Quinn calling up the stairs** to him from the front door. 'It's your friend Jane! She's here to talk to you!' By the time he reached the living room Quinn already had Jane seated on the couch with a glass of water in front of her. As soon as he came in, Quinn left them.

Sonny sat down as Jane broke the silence.

'You're looking better.'

'You're looking … not as angry as before.'

'Yeah.' Jane nodded. 'That's about right. Not as angry as before.'

They looked away from each other, then glanced at each other again, then away again.

Jane said, 'I broke up with Tom, but not because of you. I think you need to know that. We would have broken up anyway.'

'That doesn't change what you said before. You were angry because he came to me and I didn't tell you. I should have called you as soon as I could but I didn't.'

Jane cleared her throat. 'You could have. But, I get it. You didn't know how to handle it. Hell, if you were dating Brittany and she came to me saying she was going to break up with you and I didn't tell you until way later, you'd have every right to be mad at me."

"You'd never get through the hospital security where they had me after losing my mind and dating her."

"Dating isn't that bad. I mean, ok, not Brittany but some one. If you ever did decide to date I could help you."

'Why, have you got some friendly warnings to give me? Still angry enough to want to twist the knife? Not that I don't deserve it, but I can't think about that now. I'm confused enough as it is.'

'About what?"

"Why he came to me. Why not you? Why did he put me in the middle? Why didn't I tell you? Why don't I know what to say or do around you any more? You're my friend and I should be there or what ever but I don't know what to do. When I realized how mad you were I realized I might lose you."

"Oh. Um, Sonny, I know we're friends but have you ever thought about... Being more?" She sees his face go pale. "I'm not saying,"

He cuts her off. "Yes you are and this is what I've been scared of too. I like you, a lot, as a friend. When you started dating Tom it made me realize you were really looking to date some one. As long as you were together it was ok. If you broke up, which you did, and you looked around, I am right here."

"I know but,"

"Let me finish, please. I noticed a lot of things Tom and I had in common. I noticed not just one or two things but a lot of things. It got me wondering why you liked him so much. Except for the height and money difference, we were a lot alike. More than I like to think about."

"I know, I didn't even see it, at first. But I knew how you felt."

"Really?"

"Yes. We were just friends. We're not boyfriend-girlfriend. It's never been an issue because you aren't interested in dating."

"Yes, but the Tom thing weirded me out. It made me think that maybe..." Jane groans. "What?"

'Well, the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing genuinely wasn't an issue. It's like we told the Gupty kids later on when we babysat them—just because a boy and a girl are friends, it's not the same thing. I mean, the first thing I thought when I noticed you was that you could be an interesting person to be friends with, like outcasts together, and I would have thought the same if you'd been a girl, or if you were gay, or if __I__ had been gay, or whatever. We hung out together, and that was cool, and I started sketching and painting you, and that was cool too, because you made an interesting subject from an artistic point of view. And then we went to Brittany's party together, but it wasn't a date, because you don't date. I got that, but it made me start thinking. I mean, it made sense as part of the whole anti-social "go to hell" aspect of the Sonny Morgendorffer persona, but did you ever really mean that you weren't going to date anybody ever, your whole life? Do you think?'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I'd have to say that I didn't let myself think. And I suppose now we can both see another possible reason I compartmentalized like that.'

'Well, if we're taking the story in order, we haven't got to the revelation yet, right? You remember at Brittany's party I went off to the make-out room with that big-headed boy?'

Sonny nodded and Jane continued.

'Well, you made your attitude pretty clear, and it was also clear that you weren't jealous in any way and that whatever you thought you weren't going to disown me as a friend just because of my getting involved with a boy—if I did get involved. So I felt like it was clear how things could work, without actually discussing it. We would be friends, and if I got involved with a boyfriend I would, and we'd just go on being friends in a completely platonic non-romantic way. But I also figured that whatever you __said__ at that stage of your life, things might change later on and you might get into dating or whatever. So I figured we could handle that if it came up later on, but the friendship was important to me either way. I never saw our friendship as something that got in the way of my taking an interest in boys, and anything else that might happen between the two of us was just that, something that might happen or that might not, and there was no reason having that possibility in the background should hurt our friendship, which was the most important thing.'

"It still is, to me. I don't think your brother would have been so relaxed with me being around you all the time if it wasn't. That first time he saw me I was worried."

'And I do believe what you said about that first time, that you were thinking about how he might be reacting to a boy being around his little sister, because of those other experiences you'd had, and maybe that's all it was to begin with. But later … well, let's keep this in order. You remember when we were going to go to Alternapalooza? You got dressed up for the event to be "alternative". The "alternative" Sonny Morgendorffer. What did you think about that?'

'I … guess I didn't think about it too much.'

Jane nodded knowingly. 'Well, the truth is I was thinking it might be … not exactly a date, as such, but maybe an "alternative" date? I mean, going to a music festival can be the kind of thing that people do for a date, but it can also be something where a bunch of friends just hang out together. I was thinking that maybe if we got to the festival we might see another side of Sonny Morgendorffer. Just a possibility to keep open, if you see what I mean. You know that didn't work out. I felt horrible after after all the hell you went through. But even without getting there I could see you were feeling uncomfortable with the whole situation, and I started to feel bad because I'd got you into it—and I did wonder whether you were feeling as if I'd tricked you into going on a not-exactly-a-date with me and resenting it. '

"I didn't think it was a date. Just took me out of my zone." Now that Jane had mentioned it... 'Have you told Trent?'

'You mean about what's happened the past couple of days? Not so far."

"You probably should. He does live with you."

Jane smiles for the first time since Sonny told her what Tom told him. "You know, my brother thought you might be gay."

"What?!"

"Because that would be the only explanation for you not falling for my irresistible charms". He glares at her. "He likes you. He trusts you. I don't think he would mind if we... _ _"__ _He clears his throat._ Jane continued. 'Well, anyway, the next thing was that Tom came into the picture.' Jane stopped to take a drink of water.

'Like I said before, I had my ground rules clear in my own head. Like a situation where there would be a time when we'd be something else as well as friends. But, on the other hand, maybe nothing else would ever happen. So there wasn't a reason why I couldn't play the field if I wanted to, not from my end and not from yours, either. Like that time at the dance when you went out to leave me alone with two boys that neither of us knew then were Ruttheimers, or the time when you were almost maneuvering to set up Ted and me. Even when that business happened with the track team, it wasn't any possibilities between me and Evan that were an issue for you. So here's Tom, and why shouldn't I date him? Then unexpectedly you did start acting like a jerk about it, but then you realized what you were doing and we got past that. I don't know, there's no way I can know or maybe even that you can, but maybe another reason you acted that way was that you were already somehow picking up on something about it that made you feel awkward?'

'I guess, maybe.'

"Maybe? See, this is what confuses me. The way you acted I thought you might actually be jealous of Tom. Like, you realized you did like me as more than friends or some thing but couldn't tell me or were waiting for the right time. When I started seeing the similarities between you and Tom I took a new look at you and started feeling things I didn't get either. I wanted to tell my best friend but since that was you..."

'You were trapped', said Sonny, as more things started to make sense to him. "I don't know either Jane. I'm confused too. I feel the first connection with some one and Evan or big head boy weren't a threat to that connection. Tom meant more to you. He could threaten that connection, understand?"

Jane nodded.

'Where do we go from here?'

'I was hoping __you__ knew. I mean, does the whole "Sonny Morgendorffer doesn't date" thing still apply now that you know? I don't know what to do.'

'That makes two of us. But … you may be right. I was so worried you would hate me after the way you left.'

Jane didn't answer for a while. Then she said, 'I think the two of us are going to have to spend some time apart getting used to whatever happens next. Tell me, why did you even get into his car?'

'The only thing on my mind was you!' Sonny said, but then he paused and shook his head. 'I now see how that looks. Or sounds.'

"It sounds promising." The two sit in silence as neither knows what to say or do next.

* * *

 **Friday, at school,** Stacy passed him a note after _accidentally_ bumping in to him in the hallway.

"Metzer Theater, Beadle Blue Swans and White Elephants, nine?" He wrote a reply and during the next break between classes bumped in to her again.

"Excuse me, Quinn's servant or whatever, do watch where you're going."

"Sandi, I bumped in to him!" Stacy palms the note and the two go their separate ways.

Jane had noticed both bumps and stared at him while he tried eating his lunch. "You know, lunch is better if you eat and don't test to see if you can make some one's head explode with psychic powers."

"What is with you and Stacy?"

"She wants to go see the Beadle movie tonight."

"Ha, funny."

"Seriously, there is an art film by Beadle I want to see. Stacy wants to see it too and have me explain the symbolism of it."

"Really? After what we just talked about the other day? You don't date unless it is with a Fashion Fiend?

"Not a date, first of all, and second, didn't you say we needed some space? Time to think?"

"We talked about being more..."

"I know."

"Sonny I,"

"Sorry, I didn't think it was a big deal if I saw this movie with some one else. You don't like these kinds of films. Hell, I'm not even sure Stacy does. Why she needs me there to tell her what the, symbology as she put it, is. Stacy,"

Jane explodes. "Oh my god Sonny, seriously?! I just broke up with my first serious boyfriend and after what we talked about you're blowing me off for a Fashion Fiend? I thought at first you were actually jealous of Tom and might finally make a move but then I realized I was just hoping the only friend I ever had might be part human after all!"

Sonny is confused. They had talked about this. She decided, they decided, they need time apart to think about it. "Make a move? Does that sound any thing remotely like me?

"No, it sounds human. And even if you didn't I thought you understood our friendship meant more to me than my relationship with Tom. Until I noticed he was like you. He has the same sense of humor, same sense in clothes, or lack thereof, and a bunch of other things I didn't see until later. I realized I was just dating a taller version of you which as you pointed out was weird. Tom probably sensed that and that's why I kept changing myself." Jane grabs at her hair which was still striped. "Trying to change my life but you and the taller version of you just made me realize that I can't change those around me no matter how much I change myself."

"So you're mad at me because we are just friends and then you dated some one like me only to break up after you saw they were like me. When we finally told each other our feelings you said we should spend time apart and think about it. I am taking that time. If some of it is spent explaining why the men are considered as poisoning themselves for eating fast food which is actually food but the women are hip and cool for smoking cigars which are filled with poison to some one why do you care?"

Jane pounds on the table "Dammit Morgendorffer!"

As she storms off Sonny notices every one was staring at him. "Go to hell." He gets up from the table and walks the opposite way to the nearest bathroom so he could have some alone time to do what he did best, think.

 **A/N Ok, this took a LOT of changes. I actually even changed things I had outlined a lot because I like what I came up with better. I hope those of you reading enjoy it as well. I reread and rerereread it to make sure I didn't leave any mistakes but I might have still missed one or two.**


	3. Chapter 3

****James The Lesser Presents His Version of the Daria Gender Flip Based off of Not So Different.****

 ** **Not So Different Is a Story by The Other J-D. I read it and enjoyed it but had my own ideas for how the end of season four-Rest of Series could go. I asked permission and he granted it so I am going to do my own version of the show starting at S4 E12 Fire! His story is really good and I hope those who haven't given it a chance does! It will mostly be the same but a few variations thrown in for my ideas.**** ** __** ** **I don't know exactly how to do an idea like this so this will be done by trial and error.****

 ** **School's Out For Summer****

 ** **School was packing up for summer.****

Helen Morgendorffer was still working hard on her big case.

Jake Morgendorffer was still working hard for Le Grand Hotel.

And neither of them had noticed that Sonny had no plans to work hard over the summer. Or, indeed, to work at all. For the first time he could remember, his mother had not lined up a tedious summer activity for him. No music lessons, no summer camp—Sonny suppressed a shudder at the recollection of Camp Grizzly—no nothing.

Of course, if he started dating, it might possibly mean hard work figuring out the whole 'more than friends' thing, and feelings and stuff, but … he put that whole subject firmly out of his head. He definitely didn't want it there while he was trying to smooth things down with Jane.

She hadn't laughed or snorted or even smirked at one thing he'd said since Tom had broken up with her and they had talked. He started to raise his hand to scratch behind his ear and then dropped it. Hadn't he just decided to put the whole business out of his head? He did it again, more firmly still, and concentrated on Jane. She was walking just a step ahead of him. She'd been doing that a lot lately. He didn't try to catch up and get back in step with her, because if he did that she'd just speed up the minimum required to make sure she still stayed one step ahead of him. That was a contest he could never win.

He tried for a wisecrack instead, suggesting that he was finding out what it felt like to be a Lane. Jane's first response was in kind.

'That can't be, since it's only afternoon and you're already out of bed.'

Encouraged, Sonny went on to explain that with the absence of parental involvement in his life, he was turning into Jane.

'Well, that would make us siblings. That would stop any thoughts of...'

 _ _Okay,__ thought Sonny, __this is now officially not going well.__ Aloud, he said, 'That would be a way to end the problem, wouldn't it?'

Jane looked over her shoulder at him and grimaced, then shook her head, before announcing that, unlike him, she did have summer plans. She'd been accepted into a two-month program at an artists' colony run by somebody who used to be in a commune with her mother, and she'd be painting and sculpting her heart out.

Sonny had enough trouble sounding enthusiastic on the rare occasions when he actually was enthusiastic. He couldn't make his congratulations sound sincere. He'd got the point at once: for two months Jane would be away from Lawndale and away from him. She wouldn't even respond to his endeavors to extract information about the location of the artists' colony. She just told Sonny that with her away he'd have that much more time for his 'budding social life'.

Now it was Sonny's turn to grimace. She'd been like this ever since the whole thing with Stacy had started. He'd have thought, in the circumstances, that a friend could cut a friend just a little bit of slack. Especially since there was nothing there. She just wanted some one with a brain to explain the movie she wanted to see.

* * *

 **It was weird enough for Sonny when Stacy** did come over.

 _Jake opens the door and sees Stacy. "Quinn, your friend is here!"_

 _Stacy smiles. "Actually, I'm here to see Sonny. We're seeing an artsy film thingy."_

" _Sonny? That's my boy! Sonny, your," Sonny comes down the stairs cutting him off._

" _Not a date, just a friend." He moves past his dad and leaves the house with Stacy._

 _Jake watches the two walk out to Stacy's car. "That's my boy!" Ignoring what Sonny had said about it not being a date Jake goes back inside the house._

 **Sonny was surprised to hear Quinn** was getting a tutor. He was almost as surprised at getting invited to Jodie's end of school party. He wasn't going to go until he heard Quinn would be there. "Any chance to embarrass her is a chance I can't pass up."

He tried to get Jane to go but she said she would be busy getting ready for her trip to the art commune.

He is talking with Jodie when he hears some one call out to him. He turns around and sees Stacy. "Hey."

"I didn't think you'd come to this."

He looks around and sees the rest of the Fashion Club surrounded by their admirers. "Any chance to embarrass my sister."

Stacy smiles at him. "She really is but she shouldn't be. You're a lot cooler than you let on."

"Cool is not a word that describes me."

"Ok, wrong word. Gah, I should get a tutor like Quinn so I can know the right words."

Sonny sees an opportunity. His mother would eventually realize it was summer and try and rope him in to some project. If he made one of his own that he agreed to then maybe... "I could tutor you. If you wanted."

"Really? How much? I heard your mom is paying Quinn's tutor and,"

Sonny stops her. "For free. Just provide soda and pizza when I need it."

"Ok, great! Thanks! You're the best." Stacy turns and goes back to her group.

 **Sonny's mother couldn't stay** ignorant of the approach of the school's summer vacation forever. No matter how much he hoped she would.

She wanted to know what Sonny was doing for summer. Sonny had foreseen this moment and had his answer ready. "I'm tutoring." Naturally his mother wanted to know exactly what it was.

'I'm sorry', Sonny said as he looked over at Quinn, 'but the confidentiality agreement I signed with the government prevents me from revealing that. I've already said too much.'

'Sonny, I'm serious. I'm not going to let you sit around the house all summer.'

'Fine. I'll lie around the house all summer. When I'm not tutoring.'

"Who?"

"I can't say."

"Why?"

"Mom, I swear, I agreed to tutor some one."

Helen glares. "I don't think hanging out at your friend Jane's all day counts as tutoring." Sonny doesn't respond. "You'll have to work that in around working at the OK To Cry Corral."

"What?! Mom, seriously,"

"I am serious. I'm not letting you waste away the summer. You're helping that strange man Timothy and getting out of the house."

"You signed me up with out asking or telling me?"

"I know you have no real plans. Now you do."

"I do have real plans. Plans I was going to start on tonight."

"Hanging out with your friend is not a plan."

"She's not a friend she's,"

Helen's eyes go a little wide. "She? And not Jane who I know you consider a friend? Sonny, do I need to ask,"

"No." Sonny gets up from the table and leaves.

He goes upstairs and gets on the phone to call Stacy. "Hello?"

"Hi, Stacy?"

"Sonny! Are we still working on the book stuff tonight?"

"Um, if you want. I might not have as much time over the summer since I'll be stuck at the Ok To Cry Corral as a counselor."

"Oh, that thing Mr. O'Neil wanted volunteers for?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who else volunteered?"

"I doubt any one would."

"Oh. Well, they might need a female influence if it is just you and Mr. O'Neil. Maybe I should volunteer!" Sonny mumbles about getting away from the other Fashion Fiends. He didn't mumble enough. "Exactly!" He hears her giggle.

"I didn't mean for you to hear that."

"That's ok. And if we have time on the bus or whatever we can work on studying and stuff! Look at the bright side of life."

"I, I guess. I want to start on math, do you have your own calculator?"

"I do."

"Ok, I'll be over around six."

"Ok! See you then!" They hang up.

"Look on the bright side of life? Why not the bright side of death? Just before you draw your terminal breath." He shakes his head as he tries to prepare himself for the upcoming tutoring.

* * *

 **Sonny's summer was almost** there as he walked the halls on the very last day of school, which was also the very last day he'd have the chance to talk with Jane before __her__ summer plans kicked in. When he put it to her, she purported to be ready to talk—but not about 'the dating thing'.

'If you're still upset about it, we should deal with it now', Sonny said. 'Especially since we won't be seeing each other all summer.'

'You don't get it, do you? I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to think about it. Now let it freaking go, okay?'

Sonny tried at least to get her to let him buy her a good-luck pizza before her departure for her big art adventure, but she just rejected him again. As he watched her go, he thought to himself, __Well, I hope I never see you when you__ are __mad at me about any thing.__ Then he remembered that he __had__ , and just what that was like.

* * *

 **Not wanting her to leave on a bad note, Sonny goes to Casa Lane after** school and knocks on the door.

When the door opens he isn't surprised to see Trent. "Oh, hey Sonny."

"Hi Trent, is Jane home?"

"Sure, but she's been upset since breaking up with Tom."

"I figured."

"You hurt her too."

Sonny can't look him in the eyes. "I know but... I don't date. At least, I've never thought about it."

"That's not it. Even if you don't date you should have been there for her. A friend would have been there."

"I didn't do anything on purpose. I didn't know what Tom was going to say. I don't want to deal with him or their relationship or dating.

"But you do deal with your friend."

Sonny feels the guilt trip coming. "Can I talk with her? See if I can't be there for her now?"

Trent moves to the side and lets Sonny in.

Jane says to come in and he does. She is sitting on her bed eating raw cookie dough looking at a canvas covered in red paint. Behind the red paint was a woman Sonny recognized. "Lightbody?"

"I was doing a painting of her as a sort of book cover if you ever decided to print your stories."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too. I was upset and angry at every one.

"I should have talked with you. About Tom and the, other thing."

"And let me berate you and scream and yell? I wasn't fit for human consumption."

"Cannibals would agree. Too lean and stringy." He sees a smile on her face. "I still should have come over."

"And blow off your date with Stacy?"

"It wasn't a date. I was trying to explain to her the symbolism of the women in the movie smoking while the men only ate junk and fast food."

Jane gives him a quizzical look. "Huh?"

"Women pollute with poison that is hip and cool while men consume some thing not poisonous but considered disgusting."

"Sounds... Like some thing you, or Tom, would enjoy."

"It was ok. Having to try and explain other parts got annoying but I was surprised to see Stacy trying. To think, one of the Fashion Fiends only wants a brain."

"You?"

"I meant..." He sees the look on her face. "Ha. Look, Jane, I'm sorry I blew you off. I'm here now if you want to talk?"

She takes a bite out of her cookie dough. "I don't know. I might say some thing that you don't like."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"That would make things awkward between us."

Sonny only stares in response.

"Now might be the best chance, like you said, since I am going to the art commune this summer."

"It sounds like it is right up your alley."

"I hope so." She looks at the painting she ruined. "Well, while I'm gone, you can hang out more with your new friend."

"I'll try explaining to her what the different shapes on the cereal box represent."

She points at him with the cookie dough. "Seriously, you need more than one friend. I need more than one friend. Maybe I can make new ones at this retreat."

"Are you sure you want me to hang out with her?"

"If she is just a friend..." She looks for a reaction on his face but as normal he gives none. "If we are still friends, or more. Remember what I said during the blizzard that almost killed us? About the road trip and you had that stain on your ass?" He nods. "It was a joke, mostly. I was checking out your ass since you were wearing some thing different that actually showed you had one."

Sonny feels uncomfortable immediately. "Jane, please, stop."

"See? I told you it would make you uncomfortable."

"I know you did. You're my friend and I know we've talked about it recently," Jane cuts him off.

"Really? Never going to date? What about college? After college? Ten years from now?"

Sonny starts to get mad at her reaction.

"If I did lose my mind I sure as hell wouldn't date you! You know too much about me and when we broke up it would ruin our friendship."

"You say when like it is impossible to end any other way."

"Do I look like the type of person to marry any one? Why would any one want to? I'm a sarcastic asshat who pushes every one away and rejects them before they reject me."

"I didn't reject you and you didn't push me away."

With his back turned to Jane he couldn't see the hurt look on her face. "You're the exception that proves the rule."

"Look, ok, I get your hesitation against dating any one but maybe we could be different? You think I know too much about you, well, you know too much about me too. Being my friend let me share stuff with you I would never share with any one else. We could still be friends but maybe... More? Ease in to things."

He sighs heavily. "Maybe."

"I'm not saying jump in to bed together but maybe, hold hands? Start slow."

He turns back around to face her. "Look, Jane, I don't get it. How could any one like me? I'm not even sure why you do half the time. Dating is just beyond my scope of understanding."

"Stacy likes you enough to go see that film with you."

"She needed some one with an IQ higher than that of a frog we dissected last year. I'm probably the only one she knows like that."

"Sonny, damn it, why do you have to be so hard headed?"

"So when people beat me up my brain stays protected."

"You haven't been beaten up in weeks."

"I've been smart enough to avoid them."

"Sonny, I'm trying to be serious. You are my best friend and if we went beyond that I wouldn't be upset. Again, not saying rush in to things but maybe? If it gets too weird then we act like it was just an experiment for school or some thing and leave it at that."

"I'll... Think about it. Like we said we would before."

"Well, after this Friday I'll be at the retreat for two months. I know you like to overthink things but two months is more than enough time even for you to think."

"Fine, one week, two months, deadline after that." The two stare at each other in uncomfortable silence before Sonny leaves.

 **Helen had become used to her son saying** that he 'didn't date'. That he didn't "need friends". It wasn't the most important thing. He needed to make more contact with the outside world: once he'd done that, she'd always felt, he'd be better prepared to go further and actually date somebody, and there was still time for that.

So although it was a relief to find that there was a specific reason why he hadn't been interested in dating, which perhaps partly explained his almost relentlessly isolationist attitude, it didn't at all change her view that he needed more outlets. She hadn't changed that view when he had almost miraculously developed his friendship with Jane Lane. She knew it was an important friendship, and she was glad for Sonny, but it seemed to reinforce his isolationism more than not.

And he certainly shouldn't be spending the whole of the school vacation sleeping in until one in the afternoon every day, and not emerging from his seclusion until the evening.

So when Sonny's teacher Timothy O'Neill rang the house looking for counselors for his summer day camp, she had no hesitation giving him Sonny's name, despite her general reservations about the man. He hesitated. Of course he'd rather have had Quinn. Pretty much everybody would rather have Quinn than Sonny. Helen, knowing both of them intimately and feeling parental responsibility for the way they turned out, did not herself share the feeling, but she understood it. But she had already decided that since Quinn had unexpectedly suggested the idea of a tutor, she was not going to let anything else get in the way of that.

If O'Neill couldn't get Quinn, she suspected, he would still rather not have Sonny. Sonny was probably right about the connection between him and that Barch woman, with her vendetta against Sonny.

He protested again about being locked up with that man O'Neill and 'a busload of whiny kids'. He still claimed he was tutoring some one but wouldn't give the name.

As he continued to protest she put her foot down. 'Sonny', she said, 'you need to be more tolerant. You know what they say. "Judge and be judged." '

'And I judge myself unfit for human contact.'

'That's exactly what you will be if you don't start engaging with the rest of us. You keep hiding your real face behind that anti-social mask and one day the mask will be your face. I'm not letting that happen. You're working at that camp.'

As she left the room she heard behind her his flat-voiced protest continue: 'What about my feelings? What about my rights?' and then, as she shut the door, 'What about my bribe?'

 _ _No bribe this time, Sonny,__ she thought. __I'm not paying you to grow up. Despite everything, I think you're finally ready to do it for your own sake.__

It wasn't exactly the best feeling she'd ever had. But they'd both made their beds, and now they both had to lie in them.

* * *

On the bus to Mr O'Neill's 'Okay to Cry Corral' (Sonny's teeth stung every time he thought of the name), Sonny would have thought that Mr DeMartino wanted to be there even less than he did. He just wasn't sure that was possible. Maybe DeMartino was less skilled at concealing it. That thought, as well as the children surrounding him, reminded Sonny of his own experiences of elementary and middle schools. He had acute memories even without the extensive notes he still kept on file.

Stacy seemed happy about the experience. And had been right, no other girls had volunteered. She brought a history book with her so they could work on American history. Stuff they had been teaching since first grade seemed new and different to her.

With his own personal reflections on the history of America, it probably was. "All men, just men, white men, with money, are created equal. Every one else is second or third class or property."

"Huh?"

He was going to make a sarcastic comment but was supposed to be tutoring her so tried a real answer. "When they said all men are created equal, they only meant rich white men. Women couldn't vote, neither could blacks or other minorities. Blacks were property in most of the states at the time. Women wouldn't gain the right to vote until the early 20th century."

"Isn't that this century?" Sonny nods. "Wow."

O'Neill was leading his little victims in a bowdlerized version of 'This Old Man': 'With a nick-nack, gentle pat, give the dog a bone, This young person helps out at home.' When he tried to get the 'counselors' (Sonny, Stacy, and DeMartino) to sing a verse with him, he received a barren response.

The omens were no better when they arrived at the 'corral' (surely the appropriateness of the word was inadvertent on O'Neill's part). 'Uncle Timothy' (as he depressingly described himself—who'd want that in their family tree) introduced himself, and his plans for a journey together to a land of self-discovery where it was okay to laugh and okay to cry. Sonny wondered whether 'Uncle Timothy' would think it 'okay to cry' for somebody getting beaten up by a juvenile goon a head taller.

All __he__ knew was that it never __helped__ , which was why he wasn't crying at what he heard O'Neill say—not even when he invited Sonny, Stacy, and 'Uncle Anthony' to say a few words about their goals.

'My goal', Sonny said, 'is to avoid serious injury. I already know what it's like to get beaten up by a middle-school bully, so the experience would lack the charm of novelty.' He turned to DeMartino to signal him to have his say.

'I'm hoping to rediscover the __joys__ and __satisfactions__ of __teaching__ , and the motives that led me to pursue such a __thankless__ … I mean, __rewarding__ profession in the first place. At least that's what my doctor says I need to do before I incur a cerebral __haemorrhage__!'

O'Neill assumed his accustomed posture for 'taken aback' and chuckled nervously. He explained that he'd been referring to goals for the campers.

DeMartino pulled out an index card and read from it. 'To help make this a __pleasurable__ experience for all. Let's learn to love ourselves together.'

Sonny said, 'I don't want any of the campers to get beaten up either.'

Stacy stood up next. "I'm here to give the girls a role model!"

After a slight pause, O'Neill chuckled nervously again, and then divided them all into groups. Sonny went up to the table where his group was sitting and asked them whether they had anything to say before getting started. Some of them asked him personal questions about his appearance and demeanor—another experience without the charm of novelty. Instead of answering, he singled out a boy at the end who had folded his arms on the table and then buried his head in them—possibly some sort of kindred spirit.

'Um, how about you? Would you like to say anything?'

The boy raised his head, black-haired and bespectacled, as if the hinge in his neck needed oiling. When he spoke, his voice gave a similar impression.

'Is it fall yet?'

* * *

 **Jane's first introduction to the art** colony had not been comfortable. She seemed to be the youngest person there—probably the only high-schooler there—and she had a feeling that the people she had met didn't take her seriously as a result. Or perhaps, although it wasn't what she wanted to be true, they were a bunch of posers who didn't take her seriously because she didn't know how to pose. She couldn't help wishing she could hear what Sonny would have said about them, although she pushed the thought away.

It didn't help that people seemed to be genuine about admiring Daniel Dotson, the guest artist and—as far as Jane could see—poser-in-chief. They even laughed at his jokes as he lectured them about a pathetic piece of conceptual art he had produced. When he asked them rhetorically about the thoughts that lay behind it, she couldn't stop herself from muttering some words to put in his mouth: 'I can't believe I'm getting away with this'. When somebody else in the audience (Paris, one of the women sharing Jane's cabin) responded to Dotson by shamelessly kissing up, calling him 'the greatest living artist of our time', Jane muttered another wisecrack about the lack of taste the woman was exhibiting. Sonny wasn't there to appreciate, but the young woman sitting next to Jane, who looked a little like Bif Naked, threw her a conspiratorial smirk. When another admirer asked Dotson where he got his inspiration, Jane's neighbor muttered, 'My alimony bills'. She and Jane shared a look of mutual understanding. They frowned in unison at the man's own response to the question about inspiration, a response which needed no comment beyond his own supposed-to-be-mock-modest conclusion: 'that's enough of the old windbag's ramblings for today'. Then, as the group broke up, the two of them exchanged introductions and Alison (that was her name) said, 'Our Mr. Dotson's really something, isn't he?'

'Well', said Jane, 'he certainly doesn't let substance get in the way of self-congratulatory yap.'

'At least we'll never have to worry about him intimidating us with his talent.'

Jane smiled, just a little, but for the first time since her arrival.

* * *

 **Stacy said to Sonny, 'Maybe you** should get some of that for the little campers.' They were on the bus as they passed a billboard for ritalin control. It showed rats getting in to it with the tag line "Protect Your Pills, Buy Safety Lock Pill Box!"

Sonny gave the suggestion the consideration it deserved. 'Ritalin, or the rats?' he said.

Further discussion was forestalled by O'Neil trying to talk with them. "I'm so happy to have two young volunteers!"

Sonny mumbled about how he didn't volunteer but Stacy gave a more pleasant response. "I thought the girls could use some one. Can't let all the boys run around."

"That's the spirit! And to see some one so smart come and help out is great too, Sonny. I'm sure there are a few kids here who are just like you."

 _Miserable? Here against their will? Wishing you'd shut the hell up? Wishing they were back home in front of the television?_

* * *

 **Sonny wanted to** be put out of his suffering at the 'Okay To Cry Corral', but there the feeling was shared by everybody else bar two. O'Neill resisted the campers' clamor to swim in the lake, not __despite__ the heat, but __because of__ it, on the grounds of risking exposure to algal blooms. He insisted that they continued working on the construction of a craft project, encouraging them to attach sappy symbolic significance to the differently colored lanyards.

Stacy pouted about not being able to swim, "I wore my suit and every thing after I saw the lake." But she was still in a good mood overall.

A tragically ensnared DeMartino haplessly tried to follow O'Neill's example, but the only significant things he could think of to symbolism were failure, indignities, and frustration.

Sonny said, 'So continue threading the blue with the green until you've finished', adding, with a frankness born of indifference, 'or can't take the tedium any more.' Then he picked up his book and left them to it. Surprisingly, Link—the boy with the glasses, the one waiting for fall—was the first to get up and come over to him.

'Hey, Link', he said, 'need some help?'

'Nope. All done.' The boy dumped his finished product on the table in front of Sonny and slouched away. The thing looked like a rats' nest.

* * *

 **'It's been a lovely evening', Sonny** lied to Stacy, 'but I think I'm ready to go home now.' It wasn't that he minded being with Stacy, but the library was closing.

 _Sonny had to give her directions to the library. The one place none of the other students would ever see them hanging out together. Stacy said she wouldn't mind but he could tell some thing was bothering her. "What else could it be but being worried about being seen with me?" So the library was the most logical place._

"You could come to my house. We're like, right in the middle of this chapter. War of 1812 is like the exact same thing as the first one but different. I didn't know they burnt the White House down."

"Partially. A freak storm hit and the rain put it out as a tornado scared the rest of the Canadians, not actually British, soldiers away."

"I never knew Canada ever attacked us either!"

"They were part of the British Empire at the time and we had also attacked them."

"Wow." Stacy looks at the book she had checked out. "Can we keep going?"

"Are you sure you want to risk me being seen at your house?"

"It's fine! You're my tutor and camp buddy."

Sonny had never been a camp buddy. Even after years of going to summer camp. "Ok, I guess. To leave off in the middle of the battle of Lake Erie would leave me on edge too." He rolls his eyes as they leave.

 **Alison had persuaded Jane, against Jane's better judgement, to leave her room for one meal so that she** could mingle with her 'fellow artists'. Alison insisted that they'd warm up to Jane if given a chance.

Jane inquired whether they were conversing across parallel dimensions.

Alison said, 'I'll bet you dinner I'm right.'

'You're on, sucker.'

Alison took Jane to a table with Paris, another woman from Jane's cabin called Jet, and a man Jane didn't recognize. The others made no objection when Alison and Jane sat down with them. Alison asked them for their opinion of the colony.

Jet found it 'freeing'.

Paris praised Daniel Dotson for his brilliance in describing one of her works as 'a stroke of inspiration'.

The man at the table took the opportunity to make an unnecessary remark about the other kinds of strokes Paris and Dotson had explored together, and capped it by saying, 'Oh, well, I suppose genius does have its prerogatives.

Jane expressed a moderate skepticism about the applicability of the term 'genius' to Daniel Dotson.

'No offense, Jane', lied Paris, 'but aren't you still in high school? How much can you know about art at this point?'

'Excuse me?' said Jane, and thought of Sonny.

Alison rose to Jane's defence, pointing out that she'd been accepted to the program on the basis of a portfolio of work just like everybody else. Paris apologized more or less graciously, but then she gathered up her tablemates to make their farewells and leave.

'Gee, that was fun. But in the future', Jane said to Alison, 'let's save time and just roll around on gravel.'

'Sorry about that. I guess I owe you one.'

What guessing? 'You owe me dinner.'

* * *

 **As Sonny goes in to Stacy's room** he finds several books he's read in her room. "Oh my god! Don't tell any one else. I was trying to read them since like, smart people do, and I understood some of them. The Fashion Club would kick me out if they knew!"

"Why do you care? None of them seem to like you very much." Sonny tries to bite his tongue but knew it was too late. Stacy wasn't Jane. They were two totally different people. One could handle the truth, the other probably couldn't.

"They do, in their own way."

"What way is that?" She can't answer. "If you didn't spend so much time with them maybe you wouldn't need a tutor. Maybe you wouldn't feel so stupid or fat or what ever else they fill your mind up with because they don't actually like you. I hate to tell you this but I know Sandi uses you as a floormat, Tiffany probably doesn't realize you're a member half the time, and my sister... I've never heard her say one nice thing about you. Ever." Stacy gets tears in her eyes and has the look of being crushed. A look he recognized from when he was younger and didn't have the years of practice at looking bored by every thing around him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"You mean you shouldn't have said the truth." She starts to cry and Sonny is super uncomfortable.

"Uh, there there." He pats her on the shoulder.

She hugs him and cries more. "You might be the first friend to ever actually be a friend."

"Uh... Sure."

She pulls away like she had been shocked. "My make up! I'll be right back." She runs out of the room to fix it.

When she comes back Sonny is flipping through a book she had. She sees the cover and comments. "Um, Poe seemed really depressed. It made me feel like, um, me."

"That is actually very insightful. You have a brain Stacy. I get the Fashion Club frowns on that but you are a lot smarter than you let on. I'm not saying quit the club but maybe spend less time with them?

"Spend more time with you? Even if you mess up my makeup."

"I guess. Pizza?"

"Pizza! With cheese. I haven't had cheese on a pizza in forever!" Sonny is feeling uncomfortable and grabs the history book. "Back to tutoring?"

"Ok!"

 **If Sonny had been a nicer person,** he would have gone to the trouble of getting more ear defenders for Mr DeMartino and Stacy. His own pair worked perfectly, so he had no idea what songs O'Neill was now leading on the bus, but he could see from DeMartino's expression that they weren't getting any less horrifying.

Things weren't getting any less horrifying when they got to the corral, either, where the cattle were developing more signs of cabin fever. Swimming already vetoed on account of algal blooms, now hiking was added to the proscribed list on account of poison ivy and ticks in the woods. There was no sign of such prospects scaring the children, but of course that made no difference to O'Neill.

(Sonny himself had no fond memories of outdoor activities from Camp Grizzly, but then, he had no fond memories of indoor activities from Camp Grizzly either.)

Reluctantly, the children continued the painting assignment they'd been given as a means of exploring the 'child within'. Only in the strange convolutions of the mind of 'Uncle Timothy' could it make sense to speak of a 'child within' when the subject actually was a child.

DeMartino had stopped to examine the work of Josh, whom Sonny had marked down at first sight as an ugly customer. He'd known more than enough Joshes over the years—of course with that type, as far as Sonny was concerned, one was more than enough. In answer to DeMartino's question, Josh explained that he'd painted a football player because football players, everybody knew, were winners.

'I see', said DeMartino, his inflamed eyeball doing a rumba. 'Obviously, your definition of a winner is a degenerate __slacker__ with pigskin for __brains__ , an __unshakable__ desire to __sleep__ through class, and a lifetime goal of excelling at __arm noise__ contests while __never, ever__ doing any honest work of __any kind__! Is that __right__?'

For once the truth of a hoary chestnut was seen: DeMartino stood up to the bully and the bully ran away. In tears, no less. Of course, that was no evidence the same technique would have been effective if employed by somebody the size Josh would choose to pick on.

O'Neill and DeMartino lacked the insight to realize this was the best thing that could have happened to Josh, and initially both were alarmed.

'I'm no __good__ at working with young people!' DeMartino said. 'Why, oh, __why__ did I ever think I could?'

The children, unlike the adults, were well aware of who was the worst bully at camp, and spontaneously began cheering for 'Uncle Anthony', who was so overwhelmed he could barely thank them.

Although Sonny had been interested to observe all this from the corner of his eye, he was still more concerned with Link, whose 'child within' had painted a dark figure crouched in the rain by a leafless tree. It was good art, though. It reminded him of Jane. Maybe she would have known what to say to Link.

Sonny kept brooding intermittently about Link for the rest of the day. That evening in his room his thoughts had him repeatedly looking up from his book and losing his place, so the phone call from Stacy was no real interruption. But Sonny wasn't in the mood to tutor that night. He couldn't even be bothered coming up with a good excuse.

Stacy offered to come round with soup and goldfish crackers, 'or real goldfish, if you prefer', but Sonny turned him down.

Stacy dropped the light tone of voice. She was worried that things were not right with Sonny.

'I'm fine. I just don't want to get any one else sick. Why I avoided sitting next to you on the bus." _That and after what happened in your room..._ _"_ I'm sure I'll feel better in a day or two." When they hung up he was still thinking about Link.

Link reminded him of himself. Had Link learned yet how to deal with bullies? Did he wrap himself up in charts and figures like Sonny did? Or would he turn in to a bully himself?

Although Sonny wasn't sure what to do about Link, O'Neill was. Sure but, inevitably, wrong. He had noticed, unsurprisingly, that Link wasn't enjoying himself, and had fixed on a course of action: have a one-to-one chat with Link and make things worse. Sonny didn't believe anybody could feel better after a one-to-one chat with 'Uncle Timothy'. Not even Ms Barch? No, not even Barch. They probably didn't spend their time together chatting. He shuddered.

He still wasn't sure what to do about the situation when Link came out of O'Neill's office making headlong for the exit from the corral, but he headed to intercept him anyway, leaving his other charges to keep up the 'good work'. 'Hey', he said, feeling almost as ineffectual as O'Neill, 'everything okay?'

At least he got a reaction. Link was still steaming. Perhaps he'd even told O'Neill off, not that that ever did any good.

'How can you stand this place?'

Sonny processed the question rapidly. 'I didn't know I did.'

Link gave the smart remark no response but a contemptuous stare.

Sonny said, 'I'm here under duress as much as you. I may be a guard instead of a prisoner, but I can't cut short your sentence—or my own. All I can do is give you a pass out on compassionate grounds. Want to go for a walk?'

'Outside? That would be __dangerous__.'

'Not as dangerous as keeping you in the same building as "Uncle Timothy" any longer without a break. A one-to-one chat with him is grounds for a compassionate pass for anybody. And I'll be with you. But there'll be no more talking. We'll go for two completely separate silent solitary walks, only in the same place.'

He opened the door and cocked his head at Link, who silently accepted his offer by walking out and looking back for Sonny to follow him.

Despite this sign of possible progress, Sonny still felt unsettled about the whole Link situation, although when they returned from their walk 'Uncle Timothy' gave them a highly anxious look (which was just __gorgeous__ ). And Sonny still felt unsettled about Stacy.

Jane was right, he needed more than one friend. Was Stacy really going to be that one new friend? She was smarter than she ever let on but that didn't mean much when she never let on at all. After he stupidly decided to be honest with her and she cried and hugged him he felt uncomfortable about being around her.

He also was curious as to why she suddenly decided to need tutoring or started caring about art films and bettering herself. He might have asked before but after what happened in her room...

* * *

 **Alison had settled her bet with Jane** without quibble, and after the dinner she'd bought for the two of them they'd gone back to Alison's cabin to look at some of her art. Jane could see it was good, too, no matter what the galleries thought.

They were having a good enough time that when Jane wanted to call it a night Alison pressed her to stay. But Jane was exhausted and started to leave.

Alison took Jane's arm and held her back. She suggested that given the amount of wine Jane had drunk she really ought to lie down.

'No, really, I'm fine', Jane said, and she really was—until Alison put her other arm around her and said, 'I promise not to kick you out of bed in the morning. Well, unless you're snoring.'

Jane violently shrugged off Alison's arms and stepped back. 'Oh, what now!' she said. 'Am I jinxed or something?'

Alison was taken aback by the force of this reaction, and Jane felt a little embarrassed. Up till now Alison had been nothing but nice to her, and it wasn't fair to get angry for what could be no more than an honest mistake, still less for events in Jane's past that Alison had nothing to do with. She tried to get her cool back and keep it, but she also stood her ground. The problem was the calm conviction with which Alison carried on as if she knew more about Jane's sexuality than Jane herself did. This might be the first time that Jane herself had been propositioned by somebody of the same sex, but it wasn't exactly the first time she'd had to deal with the whole issue personally. But the more Jane insisted that she knew she was exclusively heterosexual, the more Alison challenged her. She seemed to think it meant something that Jane had let a bisexual buy her dinner and then gone back to her bedroom with her.

'I didn't know you were bi', Jane said. 'And the dinner thing was settling a bet.'

'Sure … settling a bet. I'm sorry, baby, but I never hit on straight chicks.'

It was the 'baby' that did it.

'Right', said Jane, 'I'm a baby. I don't have the experience to know myself. Do you want to hear about my experience? Do you want to hear how I know myself? I've dated a guy all year. A __guy__ , because I'm only interested in guys, because I'm straight. And you know how we broke up? He went behind my back with my best friend telling my best friend that he was going to break up with me. My friend, my best friend, didn't tell me. I get blindsided by it all. It made me look back and admit that the guy I had dated for a year was just a taller richer version of my best friend. After all this I tell him, my best friend, how I felt, and we decide to think about it. Then he starts seeing another girl! He says she is just a friend, not even that, but what the hell? So I run to this art colony where every one sucks ass but you and then you, you, gah!"

Alison took a step back and raised her palms towards Jane. 'I'm sorry', she said, looking into Jane's eyes, and then dropped her gaze.

'Yeah, well, you should be. And maybe some other people should be as well.' Jane shut the door firmly behind her and started jogging back towards her own cabin, her fists carving the air and her feet gouging the ground.

* * *

 **O'Neill had everybody sitting in** a circle so that he could ask them to hold hands and visualize 'trust'. The children still wanted to go outside, and when O'Neill wouldn't consider it, they appealed to 'Uncle Anthony' to intervene. He made a valiant effort, but with no greater success than theirs. At that precise moment, an alarm beeped to remind O'Neill to take his echinacea. As he left the room for it, he again asked them to hold hands.

When DeMartino followed this instruction, his hands acquired from his neighbors' a coating of peanut butter. The dam burst. Ranting in fury, he rose to his full height, grasped the nearest heavy object—which happened to be a washbasin—ripped it free, and hurled it through a large plate-glass window. 'I'm going on a hike!' he shouted, and climbed to freedom, followed by an eager procession of cheering campers.

"Wait!" Stacy didn't want to leave the kids with DeMartino as he didn't seem to be in the best of minds.

Only Link was left behind with Sonny.

'Come on', Sonny said to him. 'Even __I'll__ admit that was mildly amusing.'

'Whatever.'

Sonny looked at Link and remembered when he was about the same age.

'Sixth grade was the worst year for me', he said. 'I remember one week when I got beaten up eleven times. That's only talking about the actual physical violence, though. There's also hiding my glasses or my backpack, breaking my things or just stealing them, spoiling my food, tying my shoelaces together, phony messages from teachers about errands to run and other tricks like that … add it all together and third grade was the worst year. It got less every year after that. And the actual beatings got fewer every year after sixth grade. In fact, the last time was nine months ago, which still pretty much amazes me.'

'And now your life is one big bowl of cherries.'

'No, it still pretty much sucks a lot of the time. But school pretty much sucks for everybody.'

Link pulled a face. 'And did your mother throw your father out for being a jerk and then marry an even bigger jerk? And do your parents pay other people to deal with you because they're too busy "listening to their souls"?'

'No', Sonny said. 'My parents are still together, which I suppose I should be grateful for. Although if they did split up, maybe I'd get to live with one of them and my sister would go with the other. Do you have a sister who's the most popular girl in the school and doesn't want anybody to know you're related because it might harm her status?'

Link shook his head.

'Did you ever get beaten up eleven times in one week?'

Link made no response. Then he pointed and said, 'What's the book you're reading?'

Sonny picked it up and held it out to Link. ' _ _Metamorphosis__ , by Franz Kafka. You might like Kafka. What sort of things do you read?'

At that precise moment, O'Neill came back into the room. 'Oh!' he said. 'A little one-on-one session! That's … uh … of course it's good to "rap", right? But … not that I want to suggest anything in any way improper, or disrespect anybody's rights, but'—and here he paused again and laughed nervously—'maybe, Sonny, we should be thinking how our behaviour might be seen and interpreted by other people, people who have their own perspective, which we have to respect, even if some might consider it not as broad-minded …'

Before O'Neill could ramble on any further, three strangers came into the room, strangers impressive for their formal attire and severe demeanor, which immediately discouraged continuation of previous conversations.

To O'Neill's complete and final discomposure, they were Federal agents come to arrest him.

When they'd completed the necessary legal routine, two of them took O'Neill outside. The third and apparently most senior lingered to address Sonny.

'Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior?' he said.

'Yes, but everybody calls me Sonny.'

'Well, Sonny, thanks again for your tip-off. We picked up the Barch woman this morning as well, and we think we've got all the evidence we need against both of them, but we'll be in touch to let you know. In the meantime, about this day camp—is there a responsible adult to take charge?'

'There's __an__ adult', Sonny said. 'Mr Anthony DeMartino, he's a history teacher at Lawndale High. He took all the other kids out on a hike just before you got here.'

'That's good to know. I was ready to make any necessary arrangements with appropriate agencies, but if I can rely on this Mr DeMartino, I can get back to more important things. Only … do you know when he'll be back? There are often regulations about supervisory ratios for children in situations like this.'

'I think I know somebody who'd be more than happy to come and take Mr O'Neill's place. If it would set your mind at rest, would you like to wait just a few minutes while I make a phone call?'

The agent followed Sonny into the office and waited while he located the correct number and made the call.

'Ms Onepu?' Sonny paused for a moment to listen. 'Ms Onepu, this is Sonny Morgendorffer. There's a Federal agent here who'd like to talk to you about the welfare of some children.' He handed the receiver to the man.

As the telephone conversation continued—Sonny sensed Onepu's torrent of language was having a predictable effect on her interlocutor—Link got Sonny's attention, lowered his voice, and said, 'Did you just get "Uncle Timothy" __arrested__?'

'I think you can stop calling O'Neill "Uncle" in the circumstances. And you were here when he got arrested and saw for yourself', Sonny said flatly.

'And __they__ said __you__ tipped them off', Link hissed.

'All right', Sonny said. He looked round to make sure the Federal agent wasn't overhearing him. 'I bugged his phone. Can we please not talk about this? Don't make me beg, it would humiliate both of us.'

Link shook his head. 'Wow', was all he said.

The senior Federal agent, whose name Sonny had never got, finished his phone call at just that point, and made a welcome interruption.

'Your Ms Onepu will be here shortly. Is everything under control until then?'

Sonny nodded and the man silently shook his hand, returned his nod, and left. Sonny and Link went back out of the office into the activities room and sat down.

After a moment, Link asked Sonny to explain what O'Neill had been making such a fuss about just before they came to arrest him.

'Oh, that', Sonny said. 'He would have been worried about getting in trouble for letting me spend so much time alone with you. I'm not exactly the most popular, or nicest, or socially adept, or any thing that others would see as positive. Except for my brain.'

"Yet here you are."

"My mother _volunteered_ me against my will."

"At least you got to hang out with your girlfriend."

Sonny sighs. "She's not my girlfriend. I'm tutoring her and that's it."

Link glares. "Don't think I'm stupid just because I'm a kid. I've seen the way she looks at you. The way you two sit on the bus."

"Just tutoring her." _I think. Even I noticed..._ Link shrugs his shoulders and walks away.

* * *

 **Thinking she'd found a friend and then finding she hadn't made** things even worse for Jane than they were to begin with. Maybe Daniel Dotson was no worse than before because of her disappointment, but she felt it more. She could feel it coming out in her paintings.

The colony was a small place, and inevitably she and Alison had to chance across each other again. They exchanged wary greetings.

'Look, I gotta be honest', Jane said. 'All that stuff I said to you … maybe you didn't deserve to be blamed for stuff you had nothing to do with.'

'Basically you were right, though', Alison said. 'I shouldn't have tried to tell you who you were. Maybe I was hoping a little too hard and saw something that wasn't there.'

'So you hit on a straight chick after all. I guess now you know what that's like.'

'First time for everything. Still want to be friends?'

Jane shrugged, and then nodded, but when Alison stepped forward to hug her, Jane stepped back. Alison dropped her arms and looked awkward.

Jane tried to change the subject by warning Alison of the approach of Daniel Dotson, who was just then coming towards them. but the way he and Alison spoke to each other made it look as if the meeting was expected, and the way he pinched her bottom before going to wait for her in his car sent an even clearer message.

Jane was incredulous, and reminded Alison of the damning things she'd said about Dotson before, but Alison only protested that all she was looking for was a little fun.

Jane suggested that the possibility of a few introductions to gallery owners might have been an additional attraction. She was starting to suspect how the art world really worked.

'God', said Alison, 'high school. It's all such a big deal with you guys. You take everything so seriously.' She walked away from Jane, this time for good.

Jane answered the empty air. 'Like people saying you give off gay vibes just because they're trying to get into your pants.'

* * *

 **The campers at the 'Okay To Cry Corral' were** happy about the way 'Uncle Anthony' ran it after the removal of 'Uncle Timothy' (missed by nobody). DeMartino had been elevated by what was, candidly, little short of adulation: he had rediscovered the hunger to enlighten which had first made him want to be a teacher. Onepu had exhibited some of her usual anxieties about risks to the children, which had gained her no friends, but she had quickly been won over by DeMartino's new-found confidence and the unmistakable delight of the campers. And Sonny was not in the least surprised by the steadfast way Link cold-shouldered him up to the very last day.

Of course, it marked that summer was coming to an end. It meant Jane would eventually be home. He tried to keep that off his mind but was failing. Jane was his best friend. His only friend. Would he risk some thing that important because she, and he... He didn't think he could risk it. He liked Jane, a lot, as a friend. If they broke up and stopped being friends he'd be devastated.

To his relief ( _ _what? his what?__ ), Quinn interrupted him, entering the room without even knocking—and even that didn't provoke him into a cutting remark. Her excuse was that she was returning a book to him, but like most of her excuses it wasn't much good—the book didn't come from him but from her tutor. As if Quinn would ever forget which male had given her something, even if only as a temporary loan. So what was the real reason Quinn had come into his room? Why, to open up a conversation about that very same tutor. Not the most skillful maneuver, but not too bad for a tyro.

Why would Quinn think Sonny's opinion of the man was worth having, though? Sonny had only met him briefly. Anybody who was persevering with tutoring Quinn must have an unusual ability to tolerate pain, that was all Sonny could say.

Quinn wanted to know whether Sonny thought the tutor was 'cute'.

'Quinn, what?' Sonny stood up. 'Why would you ask me that?'

"Stacy said you're gay so I thought you might think he was cute."

Sonny is taken aback. Did Stacy really think he was gay? Or was it a cover for them hanging out together? He'd have to ask her later. Until then... "Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'd have the same tastes as some one like you."

Quinn seemed to be starting to get the point. Sonny went on to mention some of the other things, apart from appearance, that could contribute to a successful relationship, compatible qualities of character and personality.

Quinn interrupted. 'Like you?'

Sonny was irritated. He hadn't been talking himself, and he didn't want to talk about that. But Quinn insisted that he was dateable if he was gay.

'Quinn, this is what we've been talking about. Just because you and I are both attracted to boys doesn't mean we're attracted to the same ones or in the same way. Don't start telling me you know this stuff about me.'

'Gay or straight, Sonny, it's still dating, and that's been my major field of study for years.'

'Maybe', Sonny said. He scratched behind his ear. 'Why did Stacy tell you?'

'Sandi had to drag her brothers to the library and saw you two together. Sandi asked me and I didn't know why you two would be together. We asked Stacy and she said you were her gay BFF which is totally in fashion. I'm just glad Sandi didn't judge me about it. That would mean people could judge me by …' Quinn did a double-take. 'Got to go', she said, and left the room.

Sonny shook himself. He had to have somebody he could actually talk with. Not Stacy. He'd call her later. He picked up the phone and dialed.

As soon as Jane answered, he remembered how they'd parted and apologized for calling, but she sounded almost enthusiastic to hear him. Granted, enthusiasm came more naturally to her than to him, but still … He took the risk of asking her how things were going.

'Fine, fine, fine', she lied. 'Couldn't be better.'

'Sucks, huh?'

'Well, out of all the people here I did meet one who wasn't mind-numbingly pretentious, but she turned out to be a manipulative, opportunistic lech.'

The gender of the pronoun did not escape Sonny's attention. 'You're not kidding.'

'As much as I'd like to gain your sour perspective on the whole sordid incident, I don't think this is the way or the time to talk about it.'

'In that case, what if I did something like, oh, I don't know, dropped by for a friendly chat?'

'Look, I don't really feel like any visitors right now. It's nothing personal.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'Not even a visitor who can give you the exclusive inside dope on how the Feds busted Mr O'Neill?'

There was a brief silence at the other end of the line before Jane answered. 'Okay, now you're the one who's not kidding.' She gave a brief snort of suppressed amusement before continuing. 'Trent was going to drop by on his way to a gig. Maybe you can hitch a ride. They can always use an extra person to push.'

It was not in Sonny's nature to punch the air in triumph.

Hanging out with Trent was okay, too (the rest of Mystik Spiral spent most of the trip dozing in the back of the Tank, which was probably just as well). Not so okay, perhaps, was the bit where Trent's pulling a chocolate bar out of his back pocket caused the Tank to start driving on both sides of the highway at once but even that was still a more relaxing experience than it might have sounded because he was sitting next to Trent. And Trent was the one person he could really talk to about what had been happening between himself and Jane. It hardly mattered that Trent had few actual words to contribute to the conversation.

As Trent and him talked about Jane he says he wanted to be just friends still. "I'm not surprised. I'm very in tune with vibes and didn't get that vibe from you. Why I never worried about you hanging out with my sister alone."

"Uh, thanks, I guess."

"But you do have a new vibe."

"Uh, maybe." Sonny tells Trent about Stacy and how weird it is for him because he isn't sure what it is. He and Jane became friends almost instantly but he and Stacy felt different.

"She isn't like you. You don't click. But you still like her and she still likes you." After a short pause, Trent starts singing Betrayal.

'Yeah. Thanks, Trent.' He ignored Trent as they neared the colony.

They left the rest of Mystik Spiral sleeping in the Tank and walked towards the cabin where Jane was staying. Trent gave Sonny some more reassurance that Jane would agree with his decision.

Trent knocked on the door and Jane opened it. He was glad to see her.

The three of them exchanged greetings, then went inside. Jane showed them around the cabin and they chatted briefly. Then Trent excused himself to go and wake up his bandmates.

Sonny told Jane the whole O'Neill story. Jane told Sonny the whole Alison story. Sonny told Jane the whole Link story, mentioning how Link's art had reminded him of Jane. Jane showed Sonny some of her recent paintings.

'Some day the curators will look back on these and say they're from my "art colonies suck" period.'

'Yeah', said Sonny, 'this is the kind of stuff Link painted.'

'This Link situation is really bothering you.'

Sonny nodded. 'Unlikely as it sounds, I thought there was a moment where I might get through to him. He was impressed about the O'Neill bust. He thought I treated him like a kid, an idiot, because I didn't agree with him about, something."

"What was it?"

Sonny takes a deep breath. "About Stacy. I, I have been saying I was just tutoring her. But one time, when I was in her room, nothing happened it just, felt different. I didn't think I was lying at the time but...'

Jane shook her head. 'Did you?"

"I don't know. Jane, I know I still have a couple more weeks until the deadline but..."

"But you want to stay just friends." He nods. "I can understand. Our friendship is important. Do we really need to muddle it with kissing?" He shrugs his shoulders ignoring the tone of her voice. "Look, why don't we go to the Mystik Spiral gig? The music will remind you that you already knew how ugly life can get.'

The venue, when they got there, had a similar effect. As they stood around chatting while they waited for the performance to begin. She prodded him about Stacy. "I don't know. I really don't. It is weird."

Jane's response was to make it clear that Sonny shouldn't expect any sympathy from her, given the past history. From that point, their discussion entered into a labyrinth of conflicting interpretations of that past history.

Sonny was never able afterwards to reconstruct in his head just what the sequence of utterances was, but they disagreed about who had hurt whose feelings when by doing what, and about which actions had had what significance, until his head was spinning.

'I'm confused', he said. 'What are we fighting about here?'

'We're fighting about you, Sonny Morgendorffer, being dumb enough to think a boyfriend or girlfriend is worth screwing up a really good friendship for. A really important friendship.'

Sonny wasn't sure that was what had happened, not exactly—but maybe it was. He __had__ done the wrong thing to start with, he knew that, and he had hurt Jane by doing so, he'd never denied it, and everything that happened after that—well, maybe he had been as dumb as Jane said. He was the one who had risked screwing up a really good friendship over a boyfriend when Jane had started going out with Tom. He sure couldn't say he was an expert on what had happened. And supposing it possible he had been that dumb—and it was __possible__ —well, then …

'I'm sorry if I did that.' It was the least he could say. Was it enough? 'Um', he continued, 'I really missed you this summer.'

'Well, I really missed you too', said Jane. What Sonny had said had been enough. 'And I'm sorry about what happened with Link. That really sucks.'

'I'm sorry about what happened with Alison. That really sucks, too.' __Especially__ , Sonny thought, __on top of all that other stuff,__ but he decided it would be wiser not to say so. What they needed at this point was a distraction to change the subject—which providentially materialized in the form of Trent passing them on his way to the stage. They teamed up to tease him. It was good to be tandem again. Trent told them they were weird. That was good too.

When Trent had moved on, Jane asked Sonny to tell her what he had missed most about her. He told her that it was her 'damn aura'.

'My __aura__? When did you start talking like that? Are you trying to fill the gap that O'Neill's going to leave in our lives when he goes to the big house?'

'I don't know whether he'll end up actually doing time.' Sonny shrugged. 'But I guess he's not coming back to Lawndale High.'

'Yeah, it's strange to imagine.' Jane nodded thoughtfully. 'I almost feel like I'm going to miss him.'

'No you won't.'

'No, I won't.'

'But getting back to your question, I thought of you out here all summer, with your art and your humor, just being Jane Lane still, and I realized it's because you know exactly who you are, and that makes you exactly the role model that I needed this summer, when I was questioning everything I said and did.'

Jane grinned and nodded. 'You know, you're absolutely right about me.'

With a sudden electric rush, Sonny felt himself returning to normal. 'Shall I attempt further heights of ego-inflation?'

'Please do.'

Before he could, they were interrupted by a burst of feedback from the speakers, followed by Trent's voice saying, 'Hey. We're Mystik Spiral. And this one's for Sonny and Jane.'

Sonny wasn't thrilled by the idea of having a Mystik Spiral song dedicated to them. 'I hope it's not "I Will Survive" ', he said, with a fleeting glance at Jane.

'Oh, please make it "Wind Beneath My Wings" ', was Jane's response.

A moment later, the Mystik Spiral lyrics rolled over them, and although Sonny struggled to blot them out, he couldn't stop some of the words getting through: 'When [ _ _something something__ ], when the bummers bum, we'll still be freakin' friends! When the whip comes down, [ _ _something something__ ] freakin' friends! Freakin' friends! Freakin' friends! Till we come to bad ends, we're freakin' friends! Freakin' friends! [ _ _something something__ ] …'

Sonny looked at Jane for a moment and caught her looking back at him. Truly, it was as Max the drummer had once said: 'You go up against the Spiral, they're going to take you down!'

* * *

 **Before the time had come for** the Spiral's (and Sonny's) departure, the 'freakin' friends' had reached the point where Sonny and Jane shook hands. "Friends?"

"Friends." More importantly, Sonny could invite Jane to come back with them, and also not take it personally when Jane had what she herself admitted was some dumb notion of seeing the art colony program through to the end. 'Anyway', she pointed out, 'it's just another two weeks and then we'll be back at school!' She realized what she had said. 'Wait … what's my point?'

Sonny helped her out. 'That life sucks no matter what, so don't be fooled by location changes.'

'You really should write fortune cookies.'

They made their farewells, agreeing that Jane would call Sonny when she got back to Lawndale, and then Jane started back to her cabin only to stop and turn to say, 'Um, I don't believe I'm about to say this, but … you should give Stacy a shot. She's not a bad person. And you could use the recreation.'

'Um', said Sonny, feeling less bad about it because this time Jane had said it first, 'is this a final exam, just to see whether I'm still dumb enough to risk screwing up a really important friendship?'

'No. I don't play games like that.'

'Yeah, right.'

She gives him a look. "Glad to see you might finally join the human race after all."

"I don't race. Especially not against you. Are you sure you're ok?"

"Yes. I had time to think and look at it with out you being thrown in my face. I dated a guy who was like you but not you. Heck, I was actually a little afraid you'd try and take him from me."

Sonny thinks of Stacy's story about him. He hadn't called and asked her about it yet. "You think I'm gay?" She shrugs her shoulders. "It would explain why I would never date you and why we are just friends. But I don't think so."

Jane smirks. "If I wanted to date you I'm sure I could have wriggled it out of you. But you're right. We're friends, just friends, and I wouldn't want to ruin that."

"Neither would I."

Jane made a cryptic gesture with one hand. 'I know I kind of said I was over it before, when actually I was still under it, but … you could give it some thought on the ride back. Talk with her, go slow, what ever. You don't date so don't look at it as dating. Look at it as hanging out with a girl who sees you as a boy and not just a friend. '

'I don't think so.'

'Or converse with the band.' Jane grinned. 'The choice is yours.'

* * *

 **The moment Sonny realized he was** back to normal was when he was back in Lawndale, in his bedroom, reading, and Quinn made another uninvited unexplained entry. Without missing a beat, he told her that her sandals did not make her toes look fat.

Quinn wasn't back to normal, though. She took Sonny's remark as confirmation of something her tutor had said about her superficiality. Of course, it was true that Sonny's point had been that Quinn was shallow and superficial, but he'd been telling her that for about ten years and she'd never reacted the way she was reacting now. As far as Sonny could see, being shallow and superficial was just Quinn playing to her strengths. This time, though, Quinn seemed to be about to break down, just because some brainy egghead had told her that he only dated girls with 'depth'.

Sonny was puzzled. 'How did it even come up?'

Quinn didn't answer in words, but the evidence of seismic strain in her expression increased.

Sonny felt a blow from the clue stick. 'Oh, boy. __You__ asked __him__ out?'

Silent weeping.

Had Sonny had tears on his face, that day when Quinn found him on the couch and helped him out of it? He had no idea. Maybe he'd wept, maybe he hadn't.

'Quinn, I don't take back anything I've ever said to you about your shallowness, but it's not the whole truth about you. It's something you use, like Armor, or like a mask, so you can fit in, to protect yourself.'

'You mean, sort of like the way you keep people away to protect yourself by being really unfriendly and stuff?'

'Don't change the subject', Sonny said automatically, although he had to admit to himself that it wasn't a shallow or superficial thing to say. After a moment, he went on, 'You really liked him, huh?' Quinn nodded. 'Was it because of his looks?' Quinn pulled a face and shook her head. 'Well, then, if you could see past that—it means that mask you wear most of the time still isn't the face of the real Quinn.'

Quinn wiped away the tears. 'Thanks, Sonny.' She sniffed. 'Damn it, I even told him I liked him! I __never__ do that!'

'Well, that wasn't a shallow or a superficial thing to do.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Quinn, there was a boy at that stupid day camp I had to go to who was having a really rough time. His parents were jerks who didn't want to know him. I thought if maybe I could get talking with him it might help a little. And just when I thought I might be getting through to him, he decided he didn't want to know me at all.'

'Why?'

'Because...' He was about to mention the, _whatever_ _,_ between him and Stacy and stopped. "I'm gay."

'Oh.' Quinn winced.

'Sometimes people slap you in the face. But you have to keep reaching out to them. You have to give them a chance.'

Quinn sighed. 'I wish David had given me a chance.'

'The way I heard it, he did. Isn't that right? He was going to quit because you weren't paying attention to the tutoring, so you told him you'd apply yourself properly and he gave you another chance? And then you learned a bunch of stuff and found out you don't have to be a dummy if you don't want to.'

Quinn stood in silence digesting everything. Then she shook herself and looked at Sonny, noticing that he was watching her. 'Oh!' she said, 'I must look a mess! I have to go and clean up now.' She left the room hurriedly.

'How did I come up with all that crap?' Sonny said to the empty air. 'I have to be more careful about the people I listen to.'

* * *

 **Sonny called Stacy finally.** "Sonny! How was the road trip?"

"Ok, I guess." He pauses for a second. "So, uh, you told Sandi and my sister I'm gay?"

"Oh, um, sorry. I panicked! I know you're ok and stuff but they don't and you helped me so much and I didn't mean to insult you or any thing but," Sonny cuts her off.

"It isn't an insult. It was quick thinking. If people think I'm gay and I'm your gay BFF then we can, um, hang out. Outside of the library or your house. If you wanted."

"I do." Stacy plays with her hair as they both sit in silence. "If you want to."

Sonny had thought and overthought it a thousand times. He had an answer finally. "I do."

 **Coming home from the first day of his senior year,** he was sitting with the rest of his family for dinner. "Sonny, did you see the cute new sophomore? He transferred from like, Odenton or some thing. He is super hunky."

Helen tsks Quinn. "I don't think your brother would notice or care."

"Sure he would, he's gay."

Sonny drops his fork as his parents give him a look. He glares at Quinn for a second before waiting for his parent's response.

Helen simply says some thing along the lines of "Not a surprise. I'm happy you're accepting who you are."

Jake is all "That's my boy! Never afraid to say what he wants or be who he is!"

Sonny feels horrible because he has to explain to them what is going on.

He waits until after dinner and for Quinn to go up to her room before trying to set the record straight. "I'm not gay. Quinn's friend Stacy and I have been... Hanging out. I was tutoring her and didn't want Quinn or the rest of her fashion fiends to know. We still want to hang out even when not studying but since I, being the social pariah, must not be seen with her in public. Unless she has a good cover story. Like me being her gay BFF. I went with it since it would make it easier on her."

Jake is now happy to hear he has a girlfriend, "Ahem," sorry, a female friend that might be more. Helen apologizes for assuming he was gay. "Jane thought I was too. No big deal." He sees the looks on their faces. "I was surprised by the support you showed. I, if I was gay, I know you'd still love me."

"Of course we would Sonny! You're our kid!" Jake pats him on the arm.

Sonny is unsure of what else to say so he goes to the stairs and up the stairs.

Helen turns to Jake. "I guess I was wrong." She looks at the stairs. "I'm glad you didn't freak out."

"He's my son, I support him, no matter what." The two hold each other. "He's a great kid."

Helen leans her head on his shoulder. "He is. If only I could figure out what the hell went wrong with Quinn." She pulls away. "I, I can't believe I said that."

Jake smiles. "Said what?"

She smiles back and kisses him. "You're a great husband and father."

"I have a great wife to help me." They hold on to each other for a few more seconds before clearing the table.

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Through A Lens Darkly' by Glenn Eichler, 'Speedtrapped' by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil, and 'Is It Fall Yet?' by Glenn Eichler and Peggy Nicoll**_**

 **A/N Ok, a lot lot lot more to fix. But love the ending, Helen's "Oh Crap did I just say that?" Moment. Now that I have the majority of the things I wanted to do/write done... IDK if I will continue. I know a fanfic of a fanfic is different but I had these ideas and HAD to write them down. Again, The Other J-D was awesome enough to give me permission! Hope you enjoy his series, and this, and review if you have the time!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different** **JTL Version**

 ** _ **54\. Turning To Account**_**

'You owe me hugely for making me miss the biggest football game of the year', Jane said to Sonny.

'You hate football.'

'Hey! Don't try any of your twisty-turny mind games on me, Morgendorffer.'

Stacy seemed nervous as she followed the two. "Why are we here again?"

They were taking another look at the announcement on the bulletin board before going in to the auditorium for the meeting: the school review meeting which Ms Li had called for Super Bowl Sunday. At that, 'called' was an overstatement: Li's announcement over the public address system, asking students to tell their parents about the meeting, had been barely over the threshold of audibility. Admittedly, her explanation for not distributing a written invitation had some plausibility: the school had been genuinely running short of many things, not just paper.

Defoe had run out of red paint and hadn't been able to afford more. Onepu had grieved bitterly, and at length, about the deprivation for her students represented by the cancellation, for lack of funds, of their excursion to the planetarium. DeMartino had been trying to teach about the war in Chechnya with a map so old that it didn't even show Chechnya. So far the only teacher who seemed happy about the situation was Mr O'Neill's replacement, Mr Taylor. (Kevin's brain had still not fully integrated the understanding that sharing a surname didn't have to mean he was related to Brittany, although the fact that the two stood at opposite extremes of humanoid diversity would have been a clue to any normal intellect.) Unable to afford real printed copies of the play he was teaching, __Doctor Faustus__ , Taylor had instead distributed photocopies produced on the school's one ancient machine, and when several students had complained about their legibility, or lack of same, he had told them that they had all been mollycoddled long enough and that they needn't expect any weak-minded touchy-feely nonsense from him: it was about time they all toughened up and learned to cope with the real world.

Anyway, it might well be true that the principal couldn't afford to send letters to parents about the school review meeting. But that didn't explain why she'd made the announcement just after the bell rang, and in the softest possible voice. It also didn't explain why she had scheduled the meeting for a date which Sonny calculated to be a Sunday, engendering in him a suspicion which was inflamed further when Kevin and Brittany pointed out, what would not have occurred to him unaided, that the nominated date was, specifically, Super Bowl Sunday.

So the principal had something she wanted to spring on an unprepared Lawndale High, and therefore wanted nobody to come to the review meeting where she announced it. Figuring that out was the easy part. The hard part was when Sonny told his mother that she should make a point of going to the meeting and paying extra-close attention, especially if Principal Li started talking very quietly. His parents had to go to his mother's office Super Bowl party. Helen had even gone to the trouble of calling in favours from no less than five of her colleagues to get them to promise to talk with Jake. She suggested that if Sonny was so concerned about the review meeting, he should go himself.

 _ _Damn!__ thought Sonny. __I really should have known better than to light the fuse on that petard.__

 _"_ _Ms. Li is hiding some thing. I want to know what."_

 _Stacy fidgeted with her hands as she followed him inside._

* * *

Apart from Sonny himself, Stacy, and Jane, there was nobody in the seating area of the auditorium—until ninety seconds after they'd taken their seats, when Mr Taylor materialized like a pantomime demon, as if he'd been on lookout for them, and took a seat behind, above, and just slightly to one side of them (Jane didn't even notice until Sonny clued her in). On the stage there were only Li and a landshark Sonny didn't recognize. After explaining the context of the meeting, which was the acute budgetary crisis of which the entire audience was already only too keenly aware, Li introduced the congealed lump of toxicity she had invited to speak to the meeting as a Mr Leonard Lamm. He submitted for their consideration—in other words, Li had already sold out to him for—a proposal to secure additional discretionary funding for the school in exchange for an exclusive contract with a soda company to distribute and promote its product in the school and at school events and functions. In other words, as Sonny privately translated, there'd be vending machines everywhere and the school would be turned into a series of gigantic advertising billboards. Being the son of a marketing consultant was like a course of vaccinations.

At the completion of Lamm's pitch, Li appeared to have been translated to bliss, but her pep-rally performance for an audience of Sonny Morgendorffer, Stacy Rowe, and Jane Lane was an enigma. Sonny knew Li had met them both before. Maybe she was driven by an anxiety induced by the presence of Taylor, to which Sonny also found himself unpleasantly sensitive. Or maybe she just couldn't think of an alternative, and also couldn't think of an alternative to allocating time for 'public' comment, even if it was only three minutes.

Sonny rose (because otherwise there would have been no point in coming at all) and was not recognized. Li was on the point of wrapping up, so he opened his mouth.

'Excuse me?'

'Um, yes, Mr Morgendorffer?'

'If Lawndale High gets this deal with a soda company, the way it was explained, then any money received under this contract can be spent for the school's benefit, any way the school sees fit?'

Lamm stepped back to the podium to field the question. 'Yes, it's all for the school's benefit, and all you kids have to do is what you'd do anyway, drink soda.'

'So if, purely for the sake of example, the school wanted to use the money to sponsor a new student club, there would be no objection from the soda company?'

Li got an uneasy expression on her face, reassuring Sonny that she did remember him, but before she could interpose, Lamm gave Sonny the affirmative response he'd been hoping to springboard off.

'Then there would be no problem with the soda company's money being used to sponsor a Gay-Straight Alliance at Lawndale High, which currently doesn't have one?' Lamm's expression changed, and he hesitated for a moment, even throwing a glance at Li, who started to move forward to the podium again. Sonny went in for the kill. 'As I understand it, if the school sponsors other student clubs, it could lay itself open to a legal challenge if it refused the same recognition to a Gay-Straight Alliance. I'm sure my mother could confirm that.' He could see Li whispering in Lamm's ear, and knew she was telling him about Helen Morgendorffer as Sonny changed tacks. 'But this proposal is an opportunity, not a problem! Lawndale High could have the first Gay-Straight Alliance in the county. It could lead the State. Let's think about how that could redound to its reputation. And it could all be thanks to the generous sponsorship of whichever soda company enters into the exclusive contract. We could design banners and logos combining the school colors and the company's advertising colors for its soda. The soda would get the credit from being linked with its proud sponsorship of the Gay-Straight Alliance! You could design something like that, couldn't you, Jane?' He inclined his head towards her.

Jane stood up. 'Sure! That could be a great art project for the school and fantastic free advertising for the soda company. And for the Gay-Straight Alliance, of course, at the same time.'

Sonny was surprised when Stacy stood up and spoke. "The school needs to expand its views!"

Sonny gave her a concealed hand signal of approval. What was happening on stage between Lamm and Li, although the actual words were inaudible in the middle of the auditorium, made it needless to continue. Their gestures and their postures were not those of happy people. They seemed to have forgotten their audience once it fell silent. Then they seemed to remember it. They both straightened up and cleared their throats, and then Li stepped back to the podium and grabbed the microphone.

'I'm sure we can all agree that some interesting points have been raised in discussion, but darn it, our time is up. I've got Super Bowl fever! Go, team, go!'

Sonny and Jane stood and watched as Leonard Lamm walked off the stage, with Principal Li following and visibly still trying to talk him round. Then they turned to leave the auditorium, only to start at finding Mr Taylor unexpectedly right in front of them.

 _ _Am I getting that careless?__ Sonny thought.

Taylor turned a careful stare of inspection first on Sonny and then on Stacy and Jane, then retracted slightly and spoke.

'Planning on a career in marketing, perhaps? Devising a brand recognition strategy for Queer Cola?' His jaw tightened and he moved his head very slightly from side to side. Then he turned and walked out of the auditorium, casting one brief look at them over his shoulder without halting on the way.

Jane asked Sonny, 'What was that about?'

'He was saying that he saw what we'd done there to torpedo Li's plan, that he knows that we think we're clever, and that he'll be keeping an eye on us.'

'Huh.' After a pause, Jane said, 'He almost makes me miss O'Neill.'

'You don't miss O'Neill.'

'No, I don't. Anyway, do you think he's right about your torpedoing Li's plan?'

Sonny nodded. 'Yes, the school is not going to be further commercialized this time. It's not a bad result, but I've exhausted that ammunition now. I'll be disappointed if a better occasion to use it comes up later in the year. I can't afford to risk having Li trap me into actually having to start up a Gay-Straight Alliance.'

'You wouldn't want that', concurred Jane.

'A genuine extracurricular activity? An official school-sponsored club?' Sonny shook his head.

Stacy shared a look with him. He wasn't sure what it was. If, when, they spent more time together he might in the future. "Especially since none of us are gay."

"As far as the Fashion Fiends and this school are concerned, I am." The three walk out together.

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Fizz Ed' by Glenn Eichler**_**

 **A/N Rereading original version, and saw several times original flirted with Sonny/Jane/Stacy. When he was working on his writing assignment in episode 26 he started doing a short story involving him and Stacy "Talking, not dating" then threw it away and thought to himself "Where did that come from?" Or all the times Jane gave him "a look" or thought a guy was cute, like the Ruttheimer cousins, who she mentioned had same hair color as him. And the author even stated he didn't originally plan on making Sonny gay. So who knows, maybe I just picked up on all his thoughts for his original idea.**


	5. Chapter 5

**_**55\. Still Trying To Find A Map**_**

'Dad, can I talk to you about something?'

'Sure! Any time for my boy! Oh, wait, I'm getting some sort of message in code. Looks technical. This is exciting!'

Sonny looked over his father's shoulder at the screen of the laptop computer.

'Dad, you're leaning on the keyboard.'

'Oh, right. Good call.' Jake straightened up.

'If you need to concentrate on getting a grip on this new job, I'll leave you to it.' (Sonny's father had recently accepted a 'media leadership position' at an Internet start-up company. Figuring out why he'd done so was not nearly as hard as figuring out why they'd offered it to him.)

'No, I'm getting the hang of this Interwebnet superhighwaysurfing already. I'm really going to wow 'em at work tomorrow! What's on your mind, Sonny?'

'It's about … Stacy."

As Sonny continued, his father shifted his seat to face him directly.

'You see, we've been hanging out, for about six months and—'

His father squirmed and started involuntarily gurning. 'Uh, Sonny, if this is about …'

'It's not about sex, if that's what you're thinking. Don't worry, true love waits.'

'True love?' Jake was wide-eyed with puzzlement. 'Is—but hold on, what does it wait for?'

'It was a joke, Dad. Don't worry, if I get pregnant you'll be the first one I tell.'

'That was another joke?' His father grinned nervously and opened his eyes even wider. 'Right?'

Sonny continued without change of expression. 'I'll stop making jokes now, Dad. The thing about this six-month anniversary is that I wouldn't even have realized it was coming up if not for Quinn. She's been getting anniversary presents, like flowers and chocolates, and I noticed because I answered the door to one of the delivery boys.'

'Wait—what anniversaries does Quinn have? Is she—I mean, has she—'

'Apparently she's found some way of milking boys for presents to mark the anniversaries of previous occasions when they've given her presents. Growing up in this family, Quinn has a keen sense of the market and of market value.' __Including the market value of her no let's not think about that and let's not get Dad thinking about it either right-about-face back to the subject at hand.__ 'There's no more significance than that, but talking about anniversaries set Quinn off talking about my anniversary with Stacy. Like I said, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it or even noticed it, but Quinn was going on about how the fuss a guy makes over anniversaries shows how much he cares.'

'It does? I mean, yes, it does! For our last anniversary I got your mother—ah—well, anyway, this one time I got her—I mean, I arranged for—I mean—oh God, Sonny, do you know what date our wedding anniversary is?'

Sonny avoided reacting to his father's emotions. 'Maybe making a fuss about anniversaries isn't so important', he continued in a factual manner. 'Come to think of it, does Mom make a lot of fuss for you on your anniversary?' When the only response he got was more embarrassed stammering, Sonny continued, 'Dad, what I was thinking about, what I wanted to ask you about, was something that Quinn didn't see. She expects boys to do things for her, on anniversaries of whatever, and at other times. That's just part of the way she relates to them. And it seems as if the boys she dates accept that, and I guess it might be the same with some other girls, like the ones in Quinn's Fashion Club.'

'Quinn's club? Is she the head of a club? Wow!'

Sonny sighed. 'She's been the Vice-President of the Fashion Club for the last two years, Dad, and there are only four members in the club altogether, counting Quinn herself.'

'Still, Vice-President? For two years? That's pretty good, isn't it?'

Sonny squared his mental shoulders and relentlessly drove his metaphorical plough forward through the loam of his father's outpourings. 'When I hang out with Stacy, it isn't like with Quinn dating boys. But I'm a boy and Stacy might be expecting some thing. Even if we haven't actually, it," Sonny was never at a loss for words so this was unfamiliar land for him. "Quinn thinks her dates should make a fuss over her for anniversaries, so maybe Stacy, I should make a fuss over this. But I'm not a even sure you could call what we do dating. Should I still make a fuss over anniversaries if I'm not even sure there is an anniversary? Why shouldn't I make a fuss over her for anniversaries? I don't know what to think, and that's why I'm asking you.'

For a minute there was silence. Then Sonny's father cleared his throat and spoke.

'Do you know what Stacy thinks? Does she act like she expects you to make a fuss over her? There's no rule about this stuff that works for everybody. Don't think about men and women or about dating or not dating. Think about you and Stacy.'

Sonny reflected rapidly. What were his expectations of this thing with Stacy? He didn't know; he'd never been involved with somebody this way before. But Stacy had—'Thanks, Dad, that's very helpful. I'll leave you to your work now.'

'Very helpful? It was? I mean, it was my pleasure, Sonny, you're always welcome.'

* * *

'Huh?' Sonny realized Jane had been talking to him. Tuning __people__ out was a useful life skill. Tuning __Jane__ out was … was …

'Out with it, Morgendorffer. What's wrong?'

And he had come over to her place to talk with her. But … but … 'Well, it's, uh, Stacy.'

Jane grinned. 'This is slightly uncomfortable but how can I resist? Go on.'

Sonny wasn't sure he liked her eagerness. 'Well, I like hanging out with her, but it seems like all we do is hang out. We never do any of those conventional dating things, like going out to fancy restaurants or … or … I guess I don't know so much about what people do on conventional dates. But do you know what I mean? We never go in for any of that flowers-and-candy kind of stuff.'

'I know what you mean.' Jane nodded. 'That's how Tom was. When he was dating me we never went in for that flowers-and-candy stuff, either.'

'Really? Because …'

'That is if you don't count that time he took me for a horse-and-carriage ride.'

'Oh …'

'And he did take me to an Italian restaurant once', Jane went on, 'with musicians, and he got them to play my favorite song.'

'So apart from the carriage ride, which I'm guessing was moonlit, and the fancy restaurant, which I'm guessing was candlelit, what conventionally romantic things have the Romans ever done for us, right?'

'Don't make a big deal out of it. It's not like I actually enjoyed those things', Jane said, and then, as Sonny looked at her, 'Well, not much.'

'So tell me something else. If he hadn't done that would it have changed any thing?"

"I don't think so. Are you worried about Stacy? It has been awhile since you two started," She sees his glare. "Hanging out together. Is there an anniversary coming up?"

"Maybe. I don't know if you can consider what we do dating. Sure we do get pizza or a movie but it is mostly hanging out at her house or the library. There are a lot of books and other things she's never tried because she was trying to belong to the Fashion Fiends."

"There are a lot of things you've never tried too."

'I know. That's the problem. I've never dated anybody else, I've never even thought about dating anybody, and I haven't spent the last five years of my life like Quinn sitting around with my current clique doing forensic examinations of every date any of the group has been on. I started out thinking about whether it was wrong that I wasn't making the kind of fuss about her that boys make about Quinn, and then I started wondering whether I should be. Hell, the school except for you thinks I'm gay. I can't do any thing too corny can I?'

'Nah, I'm sure she hates that corny crap. She is, hanging, out with you because you're different from all the other guys she, hung out, with. Tom hated corny crap too.'

'So why did he take you on those fancy dates?'

Up to this point Jane had kept working on the artistic piece she was creating, but now Sonny noticed that she'd paused. 'They were exceptions. Most of the time we just hung out, you know, watching television and making fun of it, that kind of thing. Why did he suddenly make a big fuss of a date with all the trimmings? I never thought about it before.' She started working again. 'Here's a thought for you. Why don't you discuss this with Stacy? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work.'

'Then she'll think that I care about this.'

Jane gave Sonny the hairy eyeball. 'You do care about this.'

'But I already hate myself for caring about it. I don't want her to hate me for caring about it, too.'

'Let me put it like this. You have two choices. You can have an open, frank, candid discussion with her, laying all your cards on the table. Or you can play mind games with her like a typical girl.'

Sonny shifted uneasily. 'Why should a boy have to act differently from a girl?'

'It's not the "girl", compadre, it's the "typical". Is that what you want to be?'

Sonny flinched. 'Now turn the knife counterclockwise.'

'Hey, what are friends for?'

* * *

'Hey, Sonny!' Stacy smiled with pleasure. 'What are you up to? Come in!'

Sonny shakes off her upbeat energy. 'Oh, I was just taking a walk in the neighborhood, thought I'd see whether you wanted to join me.'

Stacy drew her head back to look at Sonny from a greater distance, but all she said was, 'I'll just get my jacket. It'll only take a minute.'

Three minutes later Stacy finally broke the silence they'd been walking in by saying, 'So, just happened to be in the neighborhood, yeah?'

'Well, I've been thinking. Either you call me, or else you come round to my place unannounced. We might go get pizza or go to the library after but it starts with you. So I thought, why should it always be up to you? I figured I'd change things around and take the initiative myself. Wouldn't want to get into a rut.'

Stacy plays with her hair nervously. 'Fair enough, but I don't feel like we __are__ in a rut. I just feel comfortable being with you. Like, I can relax and be myself. I wouldn't be calling you and coming round all the time if I didn't want to hang out with you. Don't get me wrong, I like it now that you're taking the initiative, but maybe that's just one of those things you needed time before you were ready for. I could understand that. I'm really happy with the way things are going.'

Sonny nodded. 'You're really happy. That's good.' Her, energy, was the opposite of him. Her always bubbly cheery attitude was the ying to his yang. He wasn't sure if it balanced out or not.

'Hey, I recognize that absence of tone of voice." She smiles a little. "How about you? Are you happy? Is something wrong, Sonny?' Her face changes showing her worry.

They were walking through the park now, and Sonny invited Stacy to sit down on a bench with him before answering his question.

'You haven't noticed that I've been kind of sensitive lately?'

'Well, not until now—should I feel bad about that?'

'In a way, it's kind of a compliment.' Sonny permitted himself the luxury of allowing one of his eyebrows to move up and down for a moment. 'I spent a lot of hard years learning not to let things show and if I'd lost the knack it might feel like a waste.'

Stacy nodded slowly. 'If there's something you haven't been letting show to me and now you're going to, that's kind of a compliment too.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'I give you my solemn word that this would never even have occurred to me if Quinn had not been getting gifts. It made me realize we're coming up on the six-month anniversary of our first, hanging out .' Now it was his turn to study her face for a reaction.

'So you've been feeling sensitive about something that you wouldn't even have remembered if not for __Quinn__?'

Sonny scuffed his foot on the ground. 'I know, I know. Nobody is more acutely conscious than I am of how ridiculous the idea is of my listening to Quinn. But I can't deny that she has plenty of experience of what happens when people," He takes a deep breath before continuing. "Date, even if it's only a certain kind of people, and I surely don't. I suppose I let myself listen to her in a moment of weakness. I just happened to answer the door when some poor sap arrived to deliver the latest in a procession of flowers and chocolates for her, and my mouth watering for the chocolates had an effect on me. I was hoping she had some debilitating illness and had just forgotten to share the good news, but they were all anniversary gifts, or pseudo-anniversary gifts. And that got her started how guys are supposed to treat an anniversary. What anniversaries meant in general, and although I knew it was stupid it got me thinking about whether I should be doing something special for you, and then about where our whole relation-date-ship thing is going.' Sonny took another deep breath. 'Because it doesn't seem to be going on a carriage ride to a fancy restaurant with musicians playing a special song.'

'What?'

"It was some thing Tom did for Jane. He could afford it and ok so maybe I wouldn't do that but shouldn't I do some thing like that?"

"I, I like what we have. This is the longest I've been with a boy and like, I like like you. Not because I should or you're popular or what ever but because I actually like you. You're nice and smart and help me and don't make me feel like an idiot or annoying. You're honest." She reaches over and places a hand on his. "Which means a lot to me."

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I guess we're doing okay, then. But that's no reason why I can't invite you round to my place for a special non-anniversary celebration, is it?'

'Is that important to you after all? because it isn't to me.'

'It isn't to me, either, but that's no reason why we can't do it.'

'Then I accept!' Stacy stood up. 'Um, do I need to change? I mean, it is just at your place.'

Sonny stood up as well. 'You realize that I may never be able to afford carriage rides and musicians?'

Stacy shrugged as they started walking again. 'What do you have in mind for tonight?'

'I reckoned Quinn was the trigger for all of this, so I figured we should do her a favor in exchange.'

Tom raised his eyebrows and his voice. 'A favor?'

'Protect her from getting zits by eating up one of her boxes of chocolates.'

'Eat her present?' Stacy cocked his head. 'You're sure she won't mind?'

'On the contrary. Of course I'm not sure of that.'

Stacy nodded in understanding of the kind of favor Sonny was talking about. 'Okay then.' She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

"For?"

"Talking to me. With me. About this. You were like, really worried about it, and stuff. You came and talked to me about it because you cared about what I thought." She brushes her hand against his and he takes it in his.

It wasn't the first time but it wasn't often he did it either. He was on high alert as they left the park but relaxed the closer they got to his house.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Road Worrier' by Anne D Bernstein and 'Sappy Anniversary' by Anne D Bernstein**_**

 **A/N Ok, not as hard as I thought it would be. Just gotta make sure I change all the Tom to Stacy and he to her and stuff. Hope those who read this like it and again read the original if you want because it was good!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different** **JTL Version**

 ** _ **56\. Double Or Quits**_**

Sonny and Jane were walking along the hallway together talking about a series of wagers they'd been having. There'd been one about which there were more of in a box, ZooZoo Drops or Juicy Joes. There'd been one, when they noticed Kevin Thompson one day at the pizzeria, about whether he would show off to his friends by crushing a can against his head or by covering his eyes with slices of pepperoni and pretending to be blind. There'd been one in Mr DeMartino's class about whether he'd address his students as 'imbeciles' or as 'morons'. Each time Jane had unwisely backed her judgment against Sonny's. As a cumulative result of doubling up in an effort to retrieve her losses, Jane was now forty dollars in the hole. If Sonny had had a conscience, it would have been starting to bother him, but he reminded himself that it's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep money. Obviously Jane was unaccustomedly flush with cash and didn't know what to do with it. From that point of view, by taking some of it away from her he was helping to solve her problem.

His attention was not so consumed by their discussion that he had stopped exercising his peripheral vision, and he caught a glimpse of Sandi Griffin heading in the opposite direction. He knew she'd been absent from school for a while after an accident in which she had broken one leg, so he wasn't surprised to see her returning in a cast and on crutches. Just slightly more surprising was the weight she'd gained while she was off her feet. It was odd that the President of the Fashion Club wasn't bothered by weight gain, even just a few pounds.

Or maybe she was? Stacy hadn't mentioned it. Of course, she had been spending less time with the Fashion Club and more time with him.

He and Jane had just walked past Quinn, Stacy, and Tiffany, so Sandi was bound to encounter that group in the next ninety seconds …

Hmm …

Sonny asked Jane to excuse him and go ahead, and then loitered in the hallway to see what would happen next.

From a carefully measured distance he could see Quinn and the others greeting Sandi, and he got a clear impression that things weren't going well. Then some boys joined the group, and while the girls' attention was consequently diverted, Sandi tried to flee.

There's a limit to the speed a person on crutches can attain. Sonny mentally plotted Sandi's trajectory to her target exit and timed himself to arrive at it smoothly an instant ahead of her. He pushed open the door and went through it, then lingered on the other side to hold it open for her. Then he closed it carefully behind her.

She looked at him, her eyes wide with confusion, and then said, 'Thank you, uh … thank you …'

'Sonny.'

'Thank you … Sonny.' Whenever Sandi had addressed him before, even when they'd been working together against Quinn, it had been as 'Quinn's cousin', or something of the kind.

She leaned back against the door, closed her eyes, and shook herself as much as her crutches permitted. Then she swallowed, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. 'This is a great opportunity for Quinn', she said. 'The Fashion Club's strict policy on obesity means I will have to resign, and Quinn, as Vice-President, will become the new President.' She straightened up, propped herself on her crutches again, and looked at Sonny. 'Of the Fashion Club. I'm sure Stacy will be the new Vice-President. But please let me be the first to tell them … Sonny.' She swung herself back into motion.

Sonny watched her go, scratching behind his ear. He was thinking that she must have modified her ideas about the best ways of manipulating him into serving her goals, when Mr Taylor suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

'Morgendorffer.' He looked Sonny up and down. 'I see you out here and I wonder whether you were perhaps thinking of leaving school premises during school hours, which I'm sure you know is not permitted.' He shook his head. 'Probably not. You're not stupid, are you, Morgendorffer? But perhaps you think I'm stupid? Perhaps you think I can't recognize troublemakers? Whatever the reason you're out here instead of inside where you should be, I know it's subversive.' Taylor flexed his neck muscles so that his head moved from side to side, without shifting his stare from Sonny. 'Your principal puts a lot of faith in high-technology security measures, but when it comes to dealing with subversive troublemakers, I put more faith in low-technology solutions.' He tapped the side of his nose twice. 'My nose', he said, 'and my feet.' He raised one foot slightly, then brought it down hard and moved his heel as if grinding something under it.

'Is that a metaphor, Mr Taylor? I seem to recall Mr O'Neill trying to teach us something about metaphors.'

Taylor blinked once like a lizard.

Sonny went inside, thinking, __Li won't be__ my __principal for more than another few months—you're going to be stuck with her for a lot longer.__ He dismissed the thought. Sandi and the Fashion Club and Quinn, that was more likely to be a problem for him now than Taylor. As Sandi had made him see, Quinn might become President of the Fashion Club, and that could be ugly.

Or it might make no difference at all. But he couldn't rely on that sort of luck. He had to monitor the situation. Especially if Stacy became the Vice-President. She would have to spend more time with the Fashion Fiends and that would mean less time with him... He found this unacceptable. He had to shake his head as he thought about how even less than a year ago the thought of spending any time with Stacy would be what was unacceptable. Now...

* * *

There was something more on Sonny's mind, Jane thought, than the episode of __Sick, Sad World__ they were watching (a psychic Nazi-hunter peddling a theory about the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler). She took the opportunity to ask him about her gambling debt, but he wasn't distracted enough to have forgotten that. Then Quinn came in and made a breathless announcement about how Sandi had resigned from the Fashion Club. Somehow (Jane could see that Quinn didn't understand the maneuver herself) Sandi had manipulated Quinn into resigning as well in solidarity. With both of them gone, Quinn didn't think the Fashion Club could go on.

Fine, so why had she chosen Jane and Sonny as the audience for her announcement? What made her think they would care? Jane looked to Sonny for a snarky response but he still had something on his mind. She nudged him and said, 'Should we alert __Sick, Sad World__?'

Quinn gasped and left the room, but Sonny was still silent, so Jane took up the slack. 'Did I hear right? The death of the Fashion Club? That at last the people shall be free?'

'Not likely', Sonny said. 'That club's like a hydra. You cut off one airhead, two more grow back', he continued, but his heart didn't seem to be in it.

How to snap him out of his funk? She offered him a bet on the fate of the Fashion Club and he accepted. He didn't make a further sound or move, but she could tell the gears had engaged. Good, they could use a contest: powers of manipulation pitted against each other.

* * *

Quinn couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to Sandi. Sandi had said that she (Quinn) would have to be President of the Fashion Club, what with Sandi herself resigning. Then she (Quinn) had said something about how hard it would be to replace Sandi, or something. She was pretty sure she hadn't meant that she __wouldn't__ be President. But somehow Sandi thought that was what she meant, or something. She'd said wonderful things about what a good friend Quinn was being, resigning from the fashion club along with her best friend. It sounded too good to be a mistake.

That just left one problem. Quinn thought she remembered Stacy saying that Quinn was __her__ best friend. And Stacy and Tiffany had said wonderful things about Quinn being President Quinn. When she had to tell them that she was resigning along with Sandi, they both started begging her to come back. They said Sandi didn't have to know. Quinn had been very confused. She promised them she'd think about it.

She didn't want to think about it, though. Thinking about it was too hard. She was hoping something else would happen so she wouldn't have to think about it.

When Stacy and Tiffany walked away from her again, the only thing that was happening was that Sonny's friend Jane Lane was talking to Brittany Taylor in front of Brittany's locker, which was near Quinn's.

'I knew this girl who went behind her friend's back', Jane was saying, 'and felt so guilty about it she ended up in an insane asylum and they made her wear drawstring pants and a big plastic bracelet.'

'Serves her right', Brittany said, 'the back-stabber!'

 _ _No!__ Quinn thought. __I can't wear drawstring pants!__ She had no choice. She'd have to call Stacy and tell her that they'd just have to find some new members for the Fashion Club.

* * *

Sonny was sitting at the kitchen table eating, and screening out most of what Quinn was saying on the phone to Stacy. He gathered the conversation was concerned with girls at school of whom he wished to know nothing, and how their features or clothes or whatever disqualified them for membership of the Fashion Club. If the Club broke up he'd lose his bet with Jane. Quinn wasn't in the Club any more, but she still seemed to be concerned about its survival.

She still seemed to be concerned about Sandi and Sandi's weight gain, too, judging by what she said when she got off the phone. 'Ice cream out of the carton? You're going to end up like Sandi!'

'You mean, unable to be a member of the Fashion Club? If it can't recruit me, that'll be the worst blow it's suffered yet. I don't know how it's going to survive.'

'Sonny, you've never liked the …', Quinn started, but then she checked before continuing, '… ohh, I get it. I see what you're doing. I bet you've got some sort of plot going, haven't you? You __want__ to see the Fashion Club fold up.'

Sonny put down his spoon. 'You're changing, Quinn. The Morgendorffers' little girl is finally growing up. It takes some kind of insight to think of something like that.' __But you still don't have enough insight to stop me from keeping one step ahead of you__ , Sonny thought to himself as he continued. 'It just confirms the maturity you've shown over this recent development. The old Quinn Morgendorffer might have tried to protect her own popularity by returning everything to the way it used to be. She might have tried to get Sandi to lose weight and return to the old Sandi so that the Fashion Club could be restored. But not this new Quinn Morgendorffer! You're saying that you don't care about the effect on your popularity, all you want is to show that you will stand loyally by your friend and give her __whatever support she needs__ in making her own choices for her life.'

Quinn's eyes opened wide. 'Uh … that's right! Thank you, Sonny! Sorry, gotta go now!'

Sonny permitted himself a small sigh of satisfaction and returned his attention to the ice cream.

* * *

Sonny knew how dedicated Quinn was to the maintenance of her appearance, and he figured she'd apply the same energy and commitment to licking Sandi's appearance into shape once he'd planted the idea in her head. For that matter, Sandi herself when on normal form must surely have been similarly obsessive, and he counted on that obsession returning once Quinn had given Sandi a starting kick. Still, no matter how driving and driven they were, Sandi's overweight couldn't be lost all at once. He might guess that Quinn was working hard on the project when she wasn't around, but he never saw her around much anyway, so any change there was hard to spot, and he had no way of knowing how she was spending her time without asking her, which would be way too suspicious. In the meantime his bet with Jane irritated them by hanging awkwardly suspended before settlement.

They were reminded of it in the hallway when they overheard Stacy lamenting the Fashion Club's plight to Tiffany. 'Quinn's right', she said. 'There just aren't any girls up to the Fashion Club's standards. If only looks weren't everything.'

'I know', Tiffany agreed. 'Too bad we can't let boys in.'

Unprecedentedly, Tiffany's remark gave Stacy an idea: they could recruit boys for the Fashion Club! Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie were standing at their lockers just across the hallway from Sonny and Jane, so Stacy immediately invited them to her house that afternoon to have sodas with herself and Tiffany—in other words, with the (depleted) Fashion Club, though Stacy had, interestingly, more sense than to say so.

Initially the three boys were interested only in the prospect of seeing Quinn. (Their eagerness suggested that they hadn't been seeing much of her. That suggested she was taking time away from her usual activities to attend to the restoration of Sandi to form). Unable to offer them the company of Quinn, Stacy made the mistake of offering instead a discussion on swimwear. They reacted predictably to the idea of a discussion, but she made an adequate recovery by redescribing the invitation as an opportunity to look at (pictures of) girls in bikinis. That proved to be enough to draw them in.

Sonny pointed out to Jane that it sounded as if the Fashion Club were still operating, but Jane was still sublimely confident that she'd bet the right way. She offered to double the stakes and he accepted.

With the bet still to be settled, there was a doubling of Sonny's interest in finding out how Stacy's plan had worked. He was annoyed that she had been spending so much time trying to keep the Fashion Club together. So it was not __entirely__ unwelcome when Stacy made a cautious approach to him some days later, after she'd scanned the hallway to make sure the coast was clear.

'Hey BFF!', she said, and took a step closer. 'Hi.'

'Is there something you wanted from me?' He couldn't help but let annoyance come through in his voice.

She looked down at her feet. 'Well', she said slowly, 'Um, I'm sorry. I know I've been so wrapped up in the Fashion Club but I'm the President now and I have to try and keep it together."

"Why? You've been moving father and farther away from them since we started, uh," He looked around to make sure no one could hear them. "Dating."

Stacy nodded emphatically. 'I know. But it is still important to me! College transcripts will love seeing me as a President of a club!" She claps her hands together. "Anyways, I asked Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie to come to a Fashion Club meeting to talk about swimwear. I thought, you know, they might be interested in how girls look in clothes, or in bikinis, anyway. But when I asked them which fabric they liked best they all ran out of the house.'

Anybody but Sonny would have laughed, or at least smiled. "They aren't interested in that."

'But boys can be interested in different things, can't they?'

Now Sonny's mind started leaping forward. "Yes, they can. But not those three."

"Well, um, what if some one else did? Like you?" His face never changed. "I mean, I know you don't care, but if you joined then we could spend even more time together!"

On further rapid reflection, he couldn't see anything to lose by just being honest with her, to a point. As far as the truth worked for you, nothing beat it.

'Stacy, Jane made a bet with me that the Fashion Club was going to break up. If I joined the Fashion Club, it would feel too much like trying to rig the bet. Sorry.'

'Oh.' Stacy's face fell. 'Well, um … nice talking to you. Um … say hi to Quinn for me.' She heaved a heavy sigh. 'I don't know whether the Fashion Club can survive, then. I'm about out of ideas, and I don't think Tiffany's ever had one in her life.'

Sonny was about to tell her he was sorry about that, but then he imagined Stacy saying, 'Yeah, because you want to win your bet.' Just because it was true didn't mean he wanted to hear her saying it. Luckily, unlike Stacy, he was used to saying nothing. But he couldn't hide a slight upturn of his lips at the comment about Tiffany.

* * *

Jane was washing her hands and watching Stacy mutter angrily to herself while she brushed her hair. If Stacy was in a bad mood, it could be a sign that the Fashion Club was heading for the rocks and Jane was going to be able to collect on her bet with Sonny. A moment later Tiffany came in and Jane kept watching.

Tiffany asked Stacy the time of the Fashion Club meeting and Stacy exploded. Apparently she'd been doing all the work of running the club, or trying to, while Tiffany remained, as usual, completely self-absorbed, and Stacy had reached her (unusually high) boiling point. After doing an amusing impression of Tiffany being oblivious (it was too bad Sonny couldn't have been there to see it), Stacy announced she was quitting the Fashion Club.

'Hmm', said Tiffany, 'maybe I should quit, too.'

Stacy shrieked and ran out of the bathroom. Tiffany started plucking her eyebrows. Jane went out to find Sonny and collect her money.

She had wondered whether he'd take her word for it, but when she told him the story of what she'd seen, he just nodded and handed her the cash, which she pocketed.

They walked round the corner of the hallway and found a crowd of people gathered around … something. Sonny suggested it might be the man with the balloon animals, but when they got closer it turned out to be Quinn and Sandi. They were together again … and Sandi was back to her old weight.

They both knew what that meant. Jane pulled out the money she now owed Sonny, but he stopped her.

'The Fashion Club did break up. It's just that now it's going to get together again. What say we split the difference?'

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Fat Like Me' by Peggy Nicoll**_**


	7. Chapter 7

**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different** **JTL Version**

 ** _ **57\. Second Wind**_**

'I never went to a summer camp. I didn't know they had five-year reunions. It sounds like a weird idea to me. And you say your mother is forcing you to go to this one?'

'Wouldn't you say it counts as force if the only alternative she offers is to help with cleaning out the garage this weekend?'

Jane made a broad encircling gesture to indicate the Lane residence generally. 'In this household, any suggestion from anybody about cleaning out the garage would count as evidence for the existence of orbital mind control lasers.'

Sonny acknowledged this, but suggested that they'd got off the point.

'Come on', Jane said, 'camp's not so bad.' She looked at Sonny. 'Hmm … I was going to tell you about how __I__ used to have to spend summers, on a commune with my parents' friends, making burlap sacks and building compost heaps—but I know what that particular blankness on your face means. Okay, I give in. My horror stories can't compete with what happened to you at camp.'

'There's blunt-force physical trauma', Sonny said, and then continued in a hollow voice, 'and then there are other kinds.' He switched to faking an announcer's tones (but with less modulation). 'Picture, if you will, a wildlife documentary team. What is this they have come upon? Why, it is a group of middle-schoolers who appear to be passing through the "summer camp" phase of their life cycle. They are gathered in a ring as if for some sort of ritual. Can the team get close enough to record their cries? Yes, they are chorusing "The Weird Kid and Amelia, sitting in a tree—" '

Jane interrupted. 'The Weird Kid?'

Sonny looked at her.

'Of course. Sorry, stupid of me, I should have known.'

'There were a few of them who could manage to remember my name from time to time, but—'

Jane finished the sentence for him. '—everybody knew who the Weird Kid was.' She waved a hand. 'Carry on.'

'You don't know the second line of that couplet?'

'K—I—S—S—I—N—G?'

'Except that a few of the more uninhibited choristers spelled out a different word, but they tend to avoid that kind of language in wildlife documentaries.'

'So', Jane said, 'who was Amelia?'

'She followed me around constantly at camp, for no good reason.'

Jane tilted her head to look at him sideways. 'And she wasn't deterred by the chanting? Did you ever consider the possibility that she had a crush on you?'

'No, I did not', Sonny said, again without modulation. 'I did not ever consider the possibility that she had a crush on me.'

'You know, Sonny, when we met you told me that you were a big outcast that nobody liked. Has our whole life together been a lie?'

Before Jane could ask any more questions, Trent came into the room. Not many people would have been able to recognize it, but he seemed troubled. Jane teased him a little and got him to reveal that he was troubled about Mystik Spiral's future and was even thinking about the possibility of breaking up. When he said he needed to get away and think, it gave Jane the idea of combining Trent's meditation retreat with a ride to Sonny's reunion. 'We can hang out in the sticks', she said, enlarging on the idea, 'while you're leading the color war. A waste of time will be had by all.'

'Hmm', Trent enthused.

It sounded to Sonny as if Jane had nothing to do herself that would rank higher than cleaning out the garage. He couldn't reject her suggestion, despite the catch.

* * *

'Ugh!' said the catch, looking out the window. 'Look how dirty those sheep are! From now on, I buy only imported sweaters. I bet there's not an outlet store within a hundred miles. Not that anybody would know what to buy after living out here for so long. Huh, some people are beyond help.'

'I was just thinking the same thing', said Sonny. He wondered yet again whether Quinn had really enjoyed herself at Camp Grizzly or just had a selective memory.

They'd had to bring her along: Sonny couldn't have told his parents that his friends were offering him a lift to the reunion but Quinn wasn't invited.

Stacy said she'd come along too but with Quinn coming it might blow their Gay BFF cover story.

Trent tried again to choke Quinn off by turning the subject back to the decline of Mystik Spiral, another concept which puzzled Sonny. You can't fall off the floor.

They were saved by the signpost for the turn-off. Quinn asked to be let out and said she'd find her own ride back. When she was gone, Jane said, 'She didn't say that just to get our hopes up, did she?'

It was a very short distance from the turn-off. By the time they'd found the parking area, pulled up, and descended from the vehicle, Quinn was walking up behind them. She rushed to join three other girls who looked regrettably familiar to Sonny. He explained to Jane.

'The first time we arrived here, we'd got out of the car, Mom had just taken my book away …' (Jane grinned knowingly) '… and we realized that Quinn was still hiding in the car. Then she saw that one of those girls had the same backpack she did and rushed over to join them. They bonded instantly over fashion and hairstyles and then one of them asked, and I quote exactly, "Who's that weird kid over there with your parents?" '

'And that's how you became "the Weird Kid", right?'

'Oh, it went beyond that. Quinn told them I was her distant cousin—and I've been her distant cousin ever since.'

Jane looked around. 'So this is where it all began.'

Sonny saw another familiar figure walking straight towards them as if alongside him would be a good place for her. 'You know', he said, just before the figure reached them and spoke, 'there's just a chance that this might be vaguely interesting.'

'Sonny? Is that you?'

'No, Amelia, I'm a decoy to flush out assassins.'

Amelia appeared to be as unsubtle and unsophisticated as ever. 'Thank God! I was afraid you weren't coming, and then there would be no reason for me to come, because I wouldn't have anyone to talk to. What's new?'

'It's funny you should ask me that question. There has been one big new change since we were innocent young middle-schoolers together, with our equally innocent fellow-campers carolling so gaily about the pure but deep bond they saw between us. If you were looking forward to our reunion as a way of reviving that bond, I'm afraid there is something important I need to tell you.'

'Oh!' said Amelia, and then, after one awkward moment (awkward for her), 'Oh!' again as she looked sideways to Jane. 'Ah … um …'

'Jane Lane', said Jane, with more cheer than seemed natural. 'I hear you're a big fan of Sonny's.'

Amelia looked from Jane to Sonny, then back to Jane, and then across and back again. 'Well … um … it's nice to meet you … I mean, you seem really … um …'

Sonny interrupted. 'I haven't told you my big news yet. You know, Jane was the first to guess. Well, Trent guessed too. This is Trent, Jane's brother. And Jane's been my best friend for the last two years. That is to say, most of the time. I didn't behave too well when Jane got a boyfriend a while back, and there was a bit of friction.'

Amelia looked back and forth again. 'But now you two are …?'

Jane noticed the change in Sonny's stance and face. She wasn't sure what to suspect from his response. 'Oh, we're okay with each other again now, although we went through a really bad time more recently when Jane's boyfriend and I kissed behind her back.'

'Jane's __boy__ friend … ?'

'So now you know my big news. It came as a surprise to me too, I can tell you. I never had any idea. But Jane guessed, as I mentioned. She also guessed, when I told her about you and me at camp, that you might have had a crush on me—so I thought it was only fair to let you know how, even if I were to break up with Thomas, there's no hope for you and me. Not that __that__ should be surprising news. Comes more under the heading of "story of our lives", wouldn't you say?'

The color Amelia turned reminded Sonny of the rash that had got him out of gym class, but he had to award her some points (entirely internally, of course) for her recovery.

'Well, uh, Sonny, it was great catching up with you! See you later around the reunion, okay?'

She walked off almost smoothly.

'I think you enjoyed that a little too much', Jane said. "And great story."

Sonny side glances over at Quinn. He wasn't sure he had heard him or not.

He, and Stacy, had been hanging out more and more. He started to hear rumors he wasn't her gay BFF. Stacy said she would be ok with the truth but he wasn't sure if she was truly ready. So he would help keep the cover story alive. 'It's easy for you to talk. You haven't been sentenced to summer camp reunion.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Would you believe me if I said I was being cruel to be kind?'

'Nope.'

'The fact remains, whatever my motivation, whether she had a crush on me or not it'll be better for both of us if she doesn't keep hanging around me. See that big lug coming towards us now carrying the pile of Camp Grizzly T-shirts? That's Skip Stevens, self-appointed Big Man On Camp. Amelia's lucky I drove her off before Skip turned up.'

The lug referred to introduced himself as 'Alumni Coordinator' as he handed T-shirts to Trent and Jane. Apparently he hadn't cottoned that they weren't Grizzlies (or that summer camps didn't have 'alumni'). It was the most amusement he'd ever given Sonny, but then Skip cancelled it out by addressing him.

'Saw you having a sweet reunion with your __friend__ , didn't want to interrupt. I bet __you're__ excited to be back at Camp Grizzly.'

'Hey, man', said Trent, 'what's your problem?' It sounded as if he were simply curious.

'Wait a minute', said Skip. 'Are you two Grizzlies?'

The Lanes gave a negative response. 'Actually', Jane added, 'we have to be going now', as she headed back to the van.

'I might have known it!' Skip said. 'Camp Puma!' He snatched the T-shirt away from Trent as Jane opened the passenger door and got in. 'Hey, kitty-cat!' he called. 'Give that T-shirt back!'

Trent leaned forward to look at Skip more closely and Skip took a step backward. 'You're weird', Trent said. He looked at Sonny. 'You gonna be okay here, Sonny?'

'Born coping', Sonny said.

'Gotta hit the road', Trent said, and swivelled round to depart. As he opened the driver's door, Jane leaned out of her window and shouted, 'Hey, here's your T-shirt!' She tossed it at Skip so that it wrapped round his head. As she and Trent drove off, and before Skip could recover, Sonny walked away towards a picnic table pulling a book out of his pocket.

He was still sitting there reading when Mr Potts started mustering 'alumni' for a hike, with egregious assistance from Skip. Mr Potts looked smaller than Sonny remembered, and less enthusiastic. Sonny could almost have felt sorry for him, but that would have been too much like caring. At least Skip was taking a hike. Sonny looked up from his book long enough to see them all marching away leaving him alone in the world of literature.

Well, almost all. Amelia peeled off from the tail and came back to him. She explained that she'd had an eye out for him and had noticed his absence. 'You're missing the hike', she went on.

'To say that I'm "missing" it presupposes that I was aiming at it.'

Amelia's face took on a puzzled look. 'You're not going?' Her expression changed as she sat down across the table from him. 'This reminds me of how you boycotted the End-of-Summer campfire by the lake. That was so cool.'

'Actually', Sonny said, 'I wasn't invited.'

'Oh, right.' Amelia shifted awkwardly on her seat. 'Skip really didn't like you.'

'Nobody really liked me. I was picked on systematically from the first day of camp to the last. Remember that so-called "game" where Mr Potts threw a greased watermelon into the river and we were supposed to race to fetch it out? And the first time we played it Skip said I was slacking off and pulled me into the water? That started off a new game that ran till the end of camp, to see who could get the most water on "the Weird Kid". I was probably lucky not to be invited to the campfire by the lake. But if there are any other special moments of my humiliation that you'd like to recall nostalgically, please don't let me interfere. Do you remember the horse-riding incident, when somebody deliberately jabbed my horse so that it threw me and I had to have stitches? That must have been more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. I mean, for anybody who wasn't "the Weird Kid", obviously. At least it gave me an excuse to avoid that watermelon game for a while.'

Amelia flushed again. 'Sorry', she said. She fidgeted some more, and Sonny started to turn his attention back to his book. 'Listen', Amelia blurted, 'what you said? Before? When your friends were here? Were you just making that up?'

'You picked that up, did you? You're right, I'm not a decoy to flush out assassins.'

'No, uh … I meant the other part.'

'You're still hoping that I'm not really gay?'

'I didn't mean that. What I wanted to say was, just because you're gay, that doesn't mean we can't still be friends, right?'

Sonny allowed his shoulders to move up and down slightly. 'Amelia, the obstacle to our being friends is not that I'm gay.'

Amelia smiled. 'Then that's great. Isn't it?'

'Amelia, the obstacle to our being friends is that we're not friends.'

Amelia looked as if she were about to cry. 'But we were always friends at camp!'

'You followed me around all the time, Amelia. Kind of like the way you've been trying to follow me around at this reunion. That kind of thing doesn't make us friends. We were occasional fellow-victims, that's all. Being picked on together doesn't make us friends either. And generally speaking I don't much like people following me around because of what usually happens next. You had plenty of opportunity to observe __that__ pattern at camp.'

'Well there's no need to be mean to __me__ because of it, is there? __I__ never picked on you! You just don't like anybody!' Amelia stood up and took herself off to one of the other picnic tables. Sonny watched her as she sat down heavily. She seemed to be nursing hurt feelings. There was nothing he could do about that. He returned to his book.

He was still reading, and Amelia was still off by herself doing whatever it was she was doing, when the hikers returned. In fact, he remained undisturbed—except for a few ex-Grizzlies dropping by his table for a nostalgic jeer at the Weird Kid with his nose stuck in a book, from which Amelia had a fortunate escape—until it was time for lunch. Naturally Skip was Commander-In-Chief of the barbecue grill. He was also chief spruiker for his own culinary achievements. Answering the chef's call, Sonny picked up a plate with a hamburger bun, came up to Skip's cooking station, and transferred a burger from the grill with his fork.

'Hey!' Skip said. 'Do you think you're too __special__ to line up with everybody else?'

'You told us to get our Grizzly Burgers', Sonny said accurately.

'Well, you can wait your turn like everybody else.' Skip reached out with his spatula and lifted the burger from Sonny's bun. 'This one's yours, you touched it. I'll let you know when it's ready.' He moved the spatula back in the direction of the grill, but then tilted it so that the burger fell off. 'Whoops! Looks like your burger fell on the ground. I'd better pick it up.' He bent over with the spatula, and as he did so brought his foot down on the fallen burger. 'Oh no! Now your burger's squashed! That's too bad.'

'Yeah', Sonny said, 'I'm going to miss out on your Cordon Bleu cookery.' He turned to walk back to his table and found Amelia again coming to join him.

'I saw that', she said. 'You're not scared of Skip at all, are you? Did you do something to make him mad?'

'That's hard to say, but I don't know that it makes any difference anyway.'

'You might not get any lunch now.'

Sonny sat down and looked at Amelia. She sat down across from him.

'I've still got the bun', Sonny said. 'And even if I didn't, I haven't had to pretend that I like Skip, or that I care what he says or what he thinks. Do you think anybody here likes Skip?'

Amelia slowly shook her head and Sonny continued.

'Well, tomorrow morning he's going to wake up and he's __still__ going to be Skip Stevens. And I'm still going to be Sonny Morgendorffer. Would you want to wake up tomorrow and find out that you're Skip Stevens?'

Amelia shook her head again, even more slowly.

'So my advice to you, Amelia, is that you go off somewhere by yourself and start trying to decide who __you__ want to be when you wake up tomorrow morning.'

'All right', Amelia said. She stood up and started to leave the table again, but then turned back to Sonny. 'I'm going to line up and get a burger, because I'm hungry. I don't mind sharing with you if you like.'

'I'm still okay with the bun.' Sonny returned with relief to his book, and didn't notice Amelia again until Skip had his unfortunate victims assembled once more so that he could inflict on them some of his favorite memories of Camp Grizzly. As he started to warm up (himself; there was no discernible effect on his audience), Amelia stalked up the stairs to the porch he was standing on, swiped the microphone from him, and asserted her right to speak over his objections, winning some audible support from the audience when she pushed him out of the way. As she spoke, Skip protested again, but the support got louder.

'I'm fed up with doing stupid things that I didn't want to do just because Skip says so. But until now I was frightened to be the only one who challenged him. I didn't want to stand out from the crowd if I could help it. Now that's changed. At this reunion I've renewed my acquaintance with somebody special, a role model, an inspiration.'

 _ _Oh no__ , Sonny thought. __Don't say my name. Please don't say my name.__ Please __don't say my name.__

Amelia said his name.

The audience response died.

Sonny had one instant of unexpected joy at the non-recognition of his name.

'You know', Amelia persisted, 'the Weird Kid.'

The audience came back to life. Somebody giggled with recognition and somebody else stage-whispered, in rhythm, 'The Weird Kid and Amelia'.

Amelia heard, as she was probably intended to. 'I don't care what you think and neither does he. If you want to chant about us K-I-S-S-I-N-G, you can, although it's not going to happen because he's gay. Anyway, who'd want to be involved with him? He's unpleasant, he's anti-social, he doesn't care about anybody else's feelings. But he's not afraid to think for himself and he's not afraid to say what he thinks. And from now on I'm going to be like that too, and I don't care if I end up like Sonny, with no friends.' She paused and looked around the crowd, which was now attentively silent. 'I don't care if I never come back to this stupid campground, either!'

Skip took the microphone back, but Sonny couldn't hear most of what he was saying over the crowd's cheers for Amelia, and for that he was as grateful as one can be for a mixed blessing. Amelia snatched the microphone again to respond to something Skip had apparently said about 'the team'.

'Who do you think wants to be on your team, Skip?' She pulled off her Grizzly T-shirt. 'You can just take this back as far as I'm concerned!'

As Amelia thrust the T-shirt and the microphone at Skip before walking back down the steps off the porch, the cheering rose again and the crowd all began taking off their T-shirts to throw them at Skip. Amid the hubbub Skip seemed to be appealing to Mr Potts for support, but he wasn't getting it. Sonny stopped paying attention anyway, as Amelia, down from the porch, came back towards him.

Sonny stood up for her. 'Good speech', he said.

'Thanks. Um … I hope I didn't hurt your feelings.'

'Why care?'

Amelia stopped to think about this. 'I don't know', she said finally, 'but I do.'

'Well, it takes more than just words to hurt me. Unless they happen to be particularly truthful words strung together in exceptionally observant sentences.'

Another ex-Grizzly came up to them and said, 'Amelia, thanks for telling off that jerk, and Sonny, I guess I never knew you to be such an inspiration.'

As the girl was speaking to Amelia and Sonny, Jane and Trent came up from behind. As she walked off again, both Lanes began teasing Sonny about his secret popularity. He realized they were probably going to tease him all the way back to Lawndale. He could have told them that Amelia was the one with the fan club, but instead he decided to encourage them, by protesting violently and walking off in disgust. It was the least he could do.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Camp Fear' by Jonathan Greenberg**_**

 **A/N Hmm, not much needed to be changed since there was no appearance by Stacy in any of this. Just had to change maybe two lines? Gah, feels like cheating. Some take entire pages of changes and others not so much.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different** **JTL Version**

 ** _ **58\. 'Takes A Licking …'**_**

'Okay … the movie just started and you're in the comfort of your own home. So', Jane's voice continued over the phone line, 'I'd say you're not going to make it. What would you say?'

Sonny looked at his watch. What would he say?

'Crap.'

He didn't want to explain to Jane what he was doing, so he promised to be with her as soon as possible.

On the way down the stairs he passed his father going up.

'Uh … Sonny … uh … your mother said …'

'Dad, I'm sorry, can this wait, I have to meet Jane.'

'Oh! … so … uh, Stacy …'

'No Stacy tonight, I'm meeting Jane and I'm already late. I'll see you later', he said, and then, as he opened the door to leave, 'have a good evening.'

It was only being flustered and embarrassed about having forgotten to meet Jane that got that last remark out of him. And he felt even guiltier afterwards about the way his lateness had forced Jane to go with him to the movie she referred to as 'It Came From Planet Stupid' instead of the latest Croatian comedy—guilty enough to give in to Jane's demands for a confession about the mysterious unexplained cause of said lateness. He'd been writing a short story which he was thinking of submitting for publication.

Jane was excited and enthusiastic. He hated that. But he was already in the wrong and couldn't complain. He made a token effort to discourage her from taking an interest.

'You're willing to have it published and read by strangers', Jane said, 'but you don't want your best friend to see it?'

'Thank you for understanding.'

In the end, an uneasy conscience about his forgetfulness undermined Sonny's resistance and he let Jane read the story. But after she'd read it, Sonny had difficulty undermining her resistance to telling him what she thought about it, as she too adopted the avoidant tactics that stem from an uneasy conscience. Eventually he dragged a few vague but obviously negative comments out of her. He told her that her reaction didn't matter. By now he hated the story himself.

'Look', said Jane, 'why don't you show it to somebody else? Somebody who might appreciate it more.' She crossed her arms. 'Somebody named Stacy.'

Sonny didn't buy this. If Jane could discuss the cinema of Croatia intelligently, then she could discuss literature. Ha! Who was he kidding? 'Literature', indeed. A story about a flesh-eating virus! He told Jane that he couldn't show it to Stacy because it was too intimate.

'Sonny, it's about a flesh-eating virus. How's that intimate?'

'You'd think it was pretty intimate if it was eating your flesh.'

The trouble was that although Sonny wasn't talking about the story to Jane or to Stacy, he couldn't stick to a resolution never to refer to it again. He found himself raising the subject of his writing ability with his father. Luckily it only set the man off on a rant about the lack of qualification of teachers for judging such things, the specific he had in mind emerging as a teacher at his military school who hadn't liked a song Cadet Morgendorffer had written for a school musical. Sonny abandoned his father mid-rant. He __would__ be better off letting Stacy read the story.

* * *

Stacy... liked the story. Once she got over the ick factor.

Sonny had to solicit confirmation.

Stacy liked the story. Seriously.

Sonny was so distracted that he was taken by surprise when his bedroom door swung wide and his father came in. 'Oh, uh, hey, Stacy! Good to see you! Um …'

'Hi, Mr Morgendorffer.'

'Not that it's not always great to see you, Dad, but did you come in here with any particular purpose in mind?' Insincerely, Sonny continued, 'If it was important I wouldn't want you to forget about it.'

'That's right! Thanks, Sonny. Your mother asked me … your mother asked me to find out whether you want any snacks. She said she could get you some … uh … some …'

'That's okay, Dad, we don't want anything.'

Jake looked to Stacy.

She smiled brightly. 'I'm good, thanks, Mr Morgendorffer.'

As his father turned to leave, Sonny said, 'You can remind Mom that nobody's getting pregnant in here. Also, you can give her my guarantee that no infections are being transmitted. But of course I can't ever vouch for what might go on in Quinn's room.'

'What? Quinn? My little girl!'

Over the noise of the ensuing ruckus vibrating down the hallway, Stacy asked Sonny whether there was even anybody else __in__ Quinn's room.

'I can't ever vouch for what might go on in Quinn's room. Besides, whatever I just did to my parents was only what they deserved and, as for Quinn, I don't see why she shouldn't share the pain. That is, if she's even in her room. She might be out at a Fashion Club meeting."

"There isn't one right now."

Sonny continues. "Now that I think of it, that noise might be just Mom and Dad having a full and frank exchange of views about parenting strategies.'

Stacy shrugged and looked back at the computer screen. 'You could submit this to _ _,__ _uh, what magazine did you say?"_

 _"_ _Musings Magazine._ It's much better than the story O'Neil sent to Val.'

"Really? I heard it was really good."

Sonny thought of O'Neill and Taylor. 'I know faint praise when I hear it. You're not exactly convincing me that this thing's good enough to be published.'

'That's why you submit it. To find out.' She plays with her hair. "Right?"

He recognized when she was nervous. She wanted to say the right thing but wasn't sure what the right thing was. 'I did think about submitting it somewhere. But what about the rejection, indignation, and lasting humiliation?'

'How about the success, stardom, and other stuff? Like, um,' Her face screwed up in concentration. "Poe, died young, uh, other famous guy I read was an alcoholic. Um, not like them but other famous writers?"

Sonny frowned at Stacy. 'Are you trying to motivate me to make an effort?'

'If it works, I'll never tell.' Stacy stood up. 'Come on, nobody has to know.' She stops playing with her hair. "Besides, like, if some one wants to write stuff, shouldn't others see it?"

Sonny isn't sure what Stacy was getting at. "As long as it is good." He looks at his story and wonders if it was good enough just because he didn't think it was.

* * *

'Morgendorffer.' Mr Taylor lingered over the word with the disquieting affection of a stalker, or a supervillain of the more insidious variety. ' _ _Musings Magazine__?' he read from the mailing address on the envelope Sonny was holding, before Sonny managed to drop it into the slot. 'Are you submitting a story for publication, Morgendorffer? A story that, perhaps, you wrote in time __misappropriated__ from your school obligations? Don't think just because you get … grades of a suitable standard … that even some pathetic magazine editor will attribute literary merit to your subversive outpourings.'

'Thank you, Mr Taylor.' Sonny posted the envelope. 'You've really helped me get this in perspective', he said, with an odd feeling about being so honest.

'High-school children. Delusions of grandeur. I've seen it all, Morgendorffer, and before you were born.'

'And you keep coming back for more. That makes a strong statement about your … character.'

'Cocky', Taylor said. 'I've seen cocky teenagers before.' He moved his face a fraction closer to Sonny's. 'One day you're going to find out where cockiness gets you.' He turned and walked away.

 _ _So long as it doesn't get me a job as a schoolteacher I'm ahead of the game,__ Sonny thought.

* * *

For no good reason, Quinn and the rest of the Fashion Club had inadvertently chosen the same time as Sonny to try to break into the world of publication, or at any rate vanity self-publication. They were selling copies of their own 'Fashion Club Forecast' at school. Sonny and Jane were standing in the hallway when Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie came past with the copies they had just bought because Quinn was selling them (both a sufficient and a necessary condition for their action). The actual content was another matter: they were reading out the article titles in puzzlement.

'An Ode To Aubergine?'

'A Good Pluck?'

'Please Remember To Blush?'

Jane said, 'Are there things going on in the boys' room that I don't know about?'

'Do you really want to know everything that goes on in the boys' room?' was Sonny's reply.

Jane changed the subject with a crack about how Stacy could publish Sonny's story. Sonny cracked back that his story would be unsuitable because it was full of sentences that didn't begin with 'I'—and then confessed that he had already submitted it to the magazine. After Stacy had supported the idea.

'Stacy liked your story? That's great.' Jane spread her hands. 'See, what do I know about literature?'

'What does she?'

Jane's hands went back down. 'Was I being enthusiastic again? I'm sorry.'

'You didn't mean anything by it.'

* * *

Stacy answered a knock at the door to find Sonny standing there. He kept standing there when Stacy invited him inside. Careful scrutiny of his face and posture disclosed (to Stacy, anyway) the signs that something was wrong. When Stacy asked, Sonny said (still without coming in) that his story had been rejected.

Stacy was surprised. It was a good story, surely better than a lot of the stuff that got published in __Musings Magazine__. Though she never actually read it. Still, she had some idea of the unpredictability of the publishing business, and some of the reasons why rejections were something that authors had to get used to, why one rejection didn't prove anything, why the professional thing to do was to keep submitting.

She tried to explain some of this to Sonny, but Sonny was doing one of those things he did, the one where he treated people talking to him like a book that he was only skim-reading. He seemed to want to accept the rejection as a definitive affirmation of his negative view of the world. Of course his story wasn't good enough to be published, why dream of behaving as if there were any other possibilities? Stacy persevered as best she could in face of this perversity, but Sonny (still not moving from the doorstep) interpreted everything Stacy said as an attempt to protract his suffering by getting him to repeat the cycle of submission and rejection indefinitely. He told her she was being insensitive.

Stacy shook her head. 'No, I'm supportive. But you're too thick-headed to notice. I liked that story, I thought it was smart, funny, even if it was a little icky. None of which I could say about you right now.'

'Well, thanks. See ya.' Finally, Sonny moved. In the direction of away.

'Why don't you try again?' Stacy said to Sonny's departing back. She couldn't tell whether Sonny had heard. 'Or not', she added as she started playing with her hair. Debating if she should go after him or not.

* * *

Quinn and the Fashion Club had been completely humiliated when the latest issue of their favorite fashion magazine had appeared and contradicted everything they'd 'forecast' in their 'newsletter'. Sonny wasn't comfortable with the suspicion that he wasn't being any more adult in his coping than Quinn.

He became even less comfortable when he passed by his parents' room and his father insisted on performing for Sonny the song he'd written for his military school musical. Sonny moved mental baffles into place between his auditory system and his higher brain functions, but too much leaked through and his opinion was written on his face so that even his father could read it. Sonny couldn't honestly reassure him about the quality of the song. His father threw his electronic keyboard to the floor, growling, and then said, 'I'm a failure.'

'Dad, you made up one song when you were a teenager and it's not the best thing ever written. Does that make you a failure?'

'Well, that's one of the things.'

This burst of insight from his father surprised Sonny enough to jolt him into an unaccustomed effort to reciprocate with some of the wisdom of maturity. He pointed out that at least Jake hadn't mistaken crap for something great. He'd done better than that by recognizing that he'd fallen short of the high aims he'd set himself. His father was encouraged by this to think of himself positively as having been gutsy enough to take a chance, and set up the keyboard again to have a try at a new song. Sonny reverted to shutting down the input channel, but when his father's composition stalled, he realized that he'd absorbed enough of the meter and the rhyme ('Lexus') to provide a closing line for the lyric: 'Who cares what jerk rejects us?'

'Who cares what jerk rejects us!' Jake echoed. 'Yeah!'

Sonny almost smiled. Well, at least on one side of his face.

Before he could change his mind, he went to the phone to ring Stacy and invite her to come over for the delicious meal of crow Sonny was planning for that evening.

'Oh, I'm not hungry', was Stacy's reply, 'but I'll watch you eat.'

Sonny figured he deserved that response. Actually he thought he was getting a better reaction from Stacy than he deserved. And was surprised she got the crow reference. Yes he had tutored her and they had read several books together. It still stunned him some times when Stacy showed intelligence. Some thing he didn't expect from any of the Fashion Fiends. Even if they were... hanging out. He still felt that way when Stacy arrived and made a crack about the smell of the crow cooking, and when Stacy came up to his room and then pretended not to know why Sonny had invited her. Sonny admitted he deserved the reaction, and then apologized. 'You were being supportive', he continued. 'I was the one acting like …', he said, and then, his nerve failing him, '… you know.'

'I know. But you are sorry and stuff.' Her smile let some light in to his normally dark and dim room.

Sonny wants to do some thing. Some thing he'd never done before. 'Wait a minute', Sonny said. He moved to the door and threw it open, revealing his mother behind it.

'Did you want something, Mom? Because I was just about to give Stacy a kiss, and we'd like a little privacy. You don't mind if I kiss my girlfriend in private, do you?'

'Of course not, Sonny! I was just wondering whether you and Stacy would like a snack.'

'Not right now, obviously. But thank you for thinking of it. We really appreciate it', Sonny said, and then, turning his head, 'don't we, Stacy?'

'Yes, thank you, Mrs Morgendorffer, it's very considerate of you.'

'So we'll let you know later if we want anything', Sonny said, and started to close the door.

'Okay, I'll be right here!'

Sonny paused with the door half-closed and raised his eyebrows. 'Right here?'

'Well, not right here outside your door, of course!' Helen gave a tinkle of laughter, half-turned, and took one step away. 'I mean, I'll just be … right …'

'Of course', said Sonny. 'Thanks, Mom.' He shut the door, walked back to Stacy, put his hands on Tom's shoulders, and said, 'So, forgiveness and whatnot?'

'Um, yes.', Stacy said. 'About what you said, about, um, kissing...'

Sonny gave her a lingering kiss. And another. Then he said, 'I'd like to imagine that tasted better than crow.'

'Hmm', said Stacy. 'Let me check.' They kissed again. 'Yes', said Stacy, 'even better than your mother's doubtless delicious snacks.'

'The truth is that she does mind her teenage children kissing in private', Sonny said. 'But she tries her best to be grown-up about it.'

Stacy laughed nervously. "I, um, don't mind kissing in private. I'm uh, I wasn't,"

"Expecting it?" Sonny hated how he became when it came to the subject of... closeness. "Neither was I. But you supported me even when I was being a jerk." He couldn't stop thinking about how it felt to actually kiss on the lips. Sure she had kissed him on the cheek a few times but this was a first.

Helen called out to them. 'Sonny, I just thought you should know that we're out of cheese! but there are pretzels if Stacy likes them, or pineapple chunks!'

'Thanks for letting us know, Mom!' Sonny called back.

Stacy took the conversation back to the original subject, saying that she was glad to see that Sonny was over getting a rejection letter.

'What letter?' Sonny said. 'Oh, wait.' He recited the whole text tonelessly from memory. 'Dear Mr Morgendorffer, Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. It's not right for us at this time, but please keep us in mind for future submissions.'

'But Sonny, that's great!' Stacy gave him a hug. 'If they said they want you to submit again, they really meant it. Didn't you know that?'

'I thought it was just a form thing.'

'No! The editor must have thought you really had something. They don't often give people that kind of encouragement.'

'Encouragement', said Sonny, not welcoming the word. 'Right. They want me to send them more stories they won't like so that they can reject me again. And this is a good thing.' He raises an eyebrow. "How did you know what it meant?"

"Um," Her hands start touching her hair. "I like, wrote stuff, to magazines before. Ok, not like yours but you know, fashion stuff."

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Well, in that case—and much as I enjoy the strain you're putting on my mother by being here—I guess I should get back to my writing.'

"Ok! Good luck Sonny!" She leans in and gives him a quick kiss on the lips. "See you at school!"

"Yeah, school." Sonny was still thinking, as that was what he did best, about Stacy after she left and what kissing her meant.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'The Story Of D' by Jacquelyn Reingold**_**


	9. Chapter 9

**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different** **JTL Version**

 ** _ **59\. Stretching Limits**_**

Sonny and Jane turned the corner of a school hallway to find Charles 'Upchuck' Ruttheimer bent over at the waist so that he could peer through the keyhole of the principal's office. Just at that moment he straightened up and turned round to face them.

'That's a provocative pose you were adopting there, Upchuck. Almost as if you were proffering yourself.' Sonny widened his eyes for an instant. 'I notice you changed direction and sprang stiffly to attention when you realized I was here. There's a classic pattern of mixed signals, don't you think, Jane?'

'It's funny I never thought of it before, but you're right. We could be looking at somebody in deep denial of his true self. Somebody who's so confused that even the idea of watching Ms Li change her support hose seems somehow to offer hope of resolving his inner conflict.'

To do him justice, Upchuck smoothly changed the subject without attempting to respond in any way to Sonny and Jane's remarks. 'What I was seeing through that keyhole was a cat-and-dogfight that's about to get strike-o-licious.'

Upchuck's prognostications rapidly attracted a small crowd of excited students, and then the teachers emerged led by their union leader, Mr DeMartino, with his bad eye bulging furiously from its socket. Of course it did that all the time, but his general demeanor was not that of somebody at the successful conclusion of negotiations, and the looks and the postures of the teachers who followed him was clearly that of strikers walking off the job, at which the gathered students cheered. The only teacher who could not be read so easily was Mr Taylor, bringing up the rear of the delegation, the unchanged baleful presence of somebody who had gone into a teaching career not despite a contempt for young people but because of it. He gave Sonny a prison-yard stare for a moment as he walked past.

It was a little odd, now that Sonny thought about it, that a recent arrival at the school like Taylor should already have risen in the ranks of the union. Sonny had heard that he had experience as an assistant principal at another school, which he'd had to leave because it closed down as a result of falling student numbers following demographic change. Li had been thrilled to get hold of him to replace O'Neill, but he was still going out on strike against her with the rest.

Meanwhile, Li's voice was coming over the public address system, deflating the celebrating students with the news that school would continue despite the strike. As she spoke, Jane asked Sonny, 'Is that the voice in my head that tells me to kill and kill again?'

'No', Sonny answered mechanically, 'Satan's voice is lower and he has an English accent.' But he was thinking. What kind of substitutes would Li be able to find to cover for the whole faculty?

The recollection of Mrs Stoller, engaged by Li as a substitute to fill in for Barch after her removal, did not inspire confidence.

* * *

The appearance of Stoller in front of one of Sonny's classes, substituting for DeMartino, did not inspire confidence.

The passage of the years had made it impossible for even Stoller still to mistake Sonny for a girl, but he still triggered something in whatever it was she used instead of a functioning memory.

'You're not Sally', she said, peering at Sonny like a bipedal surface-dwelling muzzle-less mole.

Sonny kept his mouth firmly shut.

Kevin Thompson had never had that much sense.

'Hey, Sally's a girl's name! She's mixing you up with a girl!' He turned his goofy grin from Sonny to Stoller. 'He's not a girl, even if he is …'

Stoller cut him off. 'Cubie, you hush! And posture, Cubie, posture!' (She had remembered Kevin and what she called him.) She turned back to Sonny. 'You do look like Sally. Is she your sister?'

'My sister's name is Quinn, and she looks nothing like me', Sonny responded truthfully. 'She has long red hair. And lip gloss. Also some sort of disturbingly bright and cheerful design on her clothes.'

'Oh, she sounds so sweet', said Stoller inaccurately. Sonny flicked his gaze sideways to Jane for a moment. With Stoller's scrutiny fixed on Sonny, she was taking the opportunity to roll her eyes and pretend to gag. 'What's your name, then, dear?' Stoller continued.

Although she gave no sign of conscious recognition, Stoller had the same reaction to 'Sunny' as on the previous occasion: she thought it sounded like a hippie name. This time her chosen 'nicer sounding' substitute designation for Sonny was 'Simon'.

* * *

When Quinn started ranting to their mother about the substitute who was taking her Language Arts class, Sonny did not tune out to quite the extent he normally would have. Sonny wasn't sure whether each substitute would take over the existing class schedule of one regular member of the faculty. He figured he might learn something about a teacher he might end up with himself (one who was writing a 'stupid novel', Sonny noted). Their mother, just as used to Quinn's frothy outpourings as Sonny, was listening even less, giving only the occasional grunted 'Mm-hmm' of simulated attention which was more than enough to keep Quinn going. It didn't seem to register with her when Quinn cited the substitute's use of the phrase 'budding child-woman', but Sonny's half-tuned ear picked it out of the torrent. His mind ticked over faster. It wasn't a challenge to the intellect to guess what sort of person might use an expression like that. (Where __was__ Li finding these substitutes?) He lowered his book and focussed more on Quinn's words.

'… started acting out his stupid book for us, stroking Tiffany's hair and telling her about his anguished soul …'

Sonny got up, walked to the cordless phone, and lifted the receiver from its cradle to take it back towards the table.

'Mm-hmm …', his mother said again, and then, with a start, '… what? He was stroking Tiffany's hair?'

Sonny took up position behind her shoulder.

'I know!' Quinn said. 'Like Tiffany would ever date somebody who wore a tweed jacket.'

'Sonny!' their mother exclaimed, and then as she turned her head towards him, 'Get me the …', before she realized he was already proffering the phone receiver.

* * *

Mrs Stoller roused from sleep when the principal's voice came over the public address system peremptorily summoning 'Mr Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior' to her office, 'Now!'

When Sonny stood up, Stoller asked, 'Simon? Where are you going?'

'To get Jacob', Sonny said as he left the room.

When he reached the principal's office, he found that his mother's promptitude in ringing a loud alarm in Li's ear had been matched by Li's promptitude in getting rid of Mr 'call-me-Ken' Edwards, Quinn's substitute Language Arts teacher. More to the depressing point, Li had continued with equal promptitude to find another way of filling the resulting vacancy …

'If somebody asked __me__ to teach a class, I'd be honored', she said to Sonny implausibly (wasn't getting promoted to principal a way to avoid having to teach classes?). 'Besides, we wouldn't be in this fix if it weren't for your mother.'

'You mean, because she took swift action to remove the threat of a damaging lawsuit? You … I mean, the school … wouldn't want to run that risk, surely?'

Ms Li muttered something that sounded like 'cost me my very pants'.

'Other people would have noticed the same liabilities eventually. Really you're lucky that my mother is a top-notch lawyer and spotted the problem first and responded at once. She knows a lot about the danger of lawsuits. For example, she knows a lot about civil rights lawsuits for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation', Sonny exaggerated. 'But you wouldn't have to worry about something like that, would you? The fact that you're offering me this chance to replace Mr Edwards confirms the school's policies combine rigorous avoidance of inappropriate touching with guarantees against any sort of discrimination. I mean, that's what it would signify if I accepted your offer. There might be different consequences if you withdrew it, of course, but why would you do that?'

'Why indeed, Mr Morgendorffer?' Li gritted her teeth. 'How few schools would have available a student of your … qualities.'

'I notice that this official school policy has not been set out in writing and promulgated. No doubt you've been too busy because of all the negotiations with the teachers' union. Luckily I'll be able to take over the responsibility of preparing the written version as a voluntary addition to my teaching workload. I'll have it on your desk tomorrow ready for the official announcement. And now I suppose you'll want to take me to be introduced to my class?'

Enjoyable though it was seeing Li squirm, Sonny did feel slight misgivings of his own at becoming a strikebreaker. He quelled them with the reflection that it wouldn't take much experience of his presence in the faculty lounge to make the principal desperate to settle with the union on any terms.

Besides, he had to think about the effect on Quinn.

* * *

The next morning, as Sonny came downstairs for breakfast, he could hear from the kitchen the dulcet tones of Quinn's plaint to their mother. He walked into the room, where their father was spouting some random irrelevance, and said, 'Morning, Mom; Dad …', and then, turning to Quinn, '… __class__.'

Quinn addressed another cry of protest to their mother and then in desperation left the room.

'What's wrong with her?' Helen said.

'Nothing …', Sonny said lingeringly, '… yet.' He thought about this. 'Well', he amended, 'nothing new yet.' Life was too short for a full answer to his mother's question. Besides, she should know what was wrong with Quinn already, and if she didn't, it was far too late to explain.

She tried to take a warning tone with him, but Sonny had no difficulty maintaining a demeanor that gave her no purchase while he asked her in a reasonable manner whether she wanted him to discharge his new 'responsibilities' as anything less than a conscientious educator. The sporadic interruptions of his father's babblings, whatever they were about, prevented her from taking Sonny further to task.

* * *

Trent greeted Jane and Sonny and they returned the greetings. Then Jane asked him what he was doing there.

'Wasn't I supposed to pick you up or something?'

'Well, that's why I set your clock ahead four hours … but maybe I overdid it? We've just arrived for the __start__ of the school day.' Jane shrugged. 'Why don't you go back to your car to catch up on your nap deficit, and you'll be nicely refreshed when it's time to take us home?'

'Sure, whatever.'

Sonny and Jane had paused when they saw Trent approaching, but now they started walking towards the school again, although with no great eagerness, until Ms Defoe broke from the picket line to come towards them.

'Jane, thank God. We need your taste and talent.'

Before they could find out what she was talking about, Ms Onepu joined the group.

'Oh! Jane! Sonny! I do hope you understand what we're doing! Of course it's terribly difficult for us to strike, and deprive you and your fellow-students of potential educational opportunities. But we do have to consider the long-term interests not just of yourselves but of the generations of children who will follow you through this school. Without adequate pay and conditions, the school can't hope to attract the best teachers or to encourage them to give to their utmost, so in the end the children suffer more. And Sonny! I hear that you're actually taking over some teaching duties. Well, I say duties, but that's not exactly right, is it? But I know you'll devote yourself to the welfare of whichever class you're assigned to, so really it's a beneficial opportunity that's opened up for them and for you. Still, I do hope that Principal Li will see reason and allow more normal arrangements to be restored as soon as possible. A just settlement of the strike is so important, I'm sure everybody can agree on that much …'

Defoe interposed to hint that it was with precisely that in mind that she had hoped to speak with Jane, and Onepu, slightly chastened, returned to her fellow-picketers. Defoe explained that she thought it might help the strikers if they had more graphically effective picket signs to get their message across, and she hoped Jane might be able to help with that. 'I'll write a note to get you out of class', she said, then gave an uncharacteristic frown. 'Oh, wait, I guess I can't.'

'No', said Jane, 'but the scab can.' She jerked a thumb at Sonny.

'Gee, thanks, Mr Hoffa', Sonny said, rummaging through his backpack. 'This is for Stoller, right?' he continued as he pulled out pen and paper.

Jane confirmed that it was.

 _ _Please excuse Jane from class__ , Sonny wrote. __Signed, Mr Simon.__ Jane would get more education out here working with the strikers than she'd get from Stoller, that was for sure.

'Morgendorffer', Mr Taylor said, taking them all unawares. 'Already abusing your temporary position of influence, I see.' He moved off again before any of them could respond.

Sonny gave the note to Jane and they went into the school building together and then separated. Jane went to hand Sonny's note to Stoller before returning to help Defoe. Sonny headed to __his__ class (and this time it really was __his__ class) to take up his teaching duties, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The first problem there was establishing what text Mr Taylor had assigned. Sonny's flesh crawled at the idea of actually asking Taylor, but the students had only hazy recollections. Thankfully Stacy raised her hand and told them they had been going over __Romeo and Juliet__. The bell rang and Sonny had to go to his locker, where he encountered Jane and told her about his experience so far.

'A classroom full of blank faces is a little spooky, until you plant your feet and stare them down.'

'You know, apes interpret that as a gesture of dominance.'

'That's what I just said.'

At that point they were approached by some of the apes from their own grade. They'd seen Jane use the note from Sonny to get out of class, and were hoping he might do the same sort of favor for them. This business of abusing a position of influence wasn't going to be a bowl of cherries unalloyed.

* * *

Jane was back constructively encouraging some of the picketers as they painted new signs, advising them that 'nothing says "death to the bosses!" like primaries. Pastels are for appeaseniks.'

'Still avoiding classes, Lane?' That was Taylor, of course, at her shoulder without warning.

'I still have a note.'

'From the strikebreaker? That's not my concern, is it … for the moment?' Taylor flexed his neck muscles, turning his head from side to side, looking towards the school building and then back to Jane. 'The principal can't expect professional maintenance of discipline without taking the proper steps for the employment of professional staff.'

Jane was saved from having to deal with Taylor when Mrs Bennett came out of the building to tell the other teachers about the principal's 'final offer'. It looked as if most of them were ready to accept it, but DeMartino scoffed. Then he pulled some papers out of his pocket and waved them around, shouting, 'This is the contract we wrote, and this is the contract she's going to sign! Cover me, boys. I'm going in!'

As DeMartino marched inside, Jane raised her head elaborately to scan the sky.

'What are you looking for, Lane?'

'Bombers. He'll never make it without air support.'

* * *

Sonny had reached the most distasteful part of his teacherly duties: the testing. They'd finished studying __Romeo and Juliet__ , and his orders from above about what came next were clear. He couldn't say whether he or the students liked it less. Personally, he was happy for the students to cheat, but they'd only be able to copy off each other, which seemed unlikely to help. Stacy seemed to be the only one who enjoyed the tragic romance and only a few students could sit next to her.

Now he was trying to get her to help him in a brainstorming session to come up with test questions, but she was only unhelpfully suggesting questions only she could answer, so at least when Quinn burst into the room she wasn't interrupting anything useful.

'Sonny, you know the test tomorrow? It's going to be easy, right? Because if you make it really hard, some popular people won't like it and might take it out on another completely innocent popular person, and besides, it's good to help the popular, because if you don't, it might make you even more unpopular, although I don't know if such a thing is possible.'

'Interesting question', Sonny said. 'More unpopular? Nobody's ever made a conscious attempt to murder me, but that doesn't mean they haven't felt like it. They might just be afraid of the law.'

'So you'll do it?'

'Right after I oil up and get into my posing pouch.' Sonny noticed Stacy grinning, but Quinn ignored the joke and protested violently at Sonny's unwillingness to accommodate her. Now Sonny was irked.

'You know, I didn't ask for this stupid teaching job. I don't need the work and I don't need the stigma.' He also didn't need to explain to Quinn why he'd taken it nonetheless. 'I've tried to make the class interesting and focus on the play, not the grades. And if, after all that, the only thing your vapid friends can think about is how to finesse taking the test, then they deserve to fail.'

'Sonny, do you want everybody to hate you?'

'Do you think there'd be a difference?'

Quinn clenched her fists. 'You know my friends don't hate you." She looked over at Stacy. "But you might be about to change the way they feel.'

Sonny faced his sister down. 'So you're just looking out for me, are you? You know I can look out for myself. And as for your friends, why should you go out of your way to protect the stupid?" Sonny flances over at Stacy and mumbles. "You're not one of them.'

'I … I …'. Quinn shifted as if she were about to stamp her foot. 'You don't understand anything!' She stormed out of the room.

When she was gone, Stacy suggested that maybe Sonny should make the test easy.

Sonny gave her an appraising look and said, 'I don't even own a posing pouch.'

'I meant, like, not easy but uh, not hard?" She starts playing with her hair. "I hate that I don't know the right word."

"Word, words, that might just be the idea I needed."

Stacy was confused but Sonny had an idea now and wouldn't let it get away.

* * *

Jane was back with the picketers, to see how the new signs were working out, when Onepu noticed that DeMartino still hadn't returned from his confrontation with Li.

'With those two in a negotiations lock-up, anything could have happened', Taylor said. 'It's time somebody reliable took a hand.' He moved towards the building entrance.

'Oh dear!' said Onepu. 'I do think it would be a good idea if we had a neutral witness to whatever we find! Jane, would you mind coming with us?'

This was a sight Jane didn't want to miss. She followed Taylor and Onepu into the school and then into the principal's office, and was rewarded by the dramatic spectacle of Li and DeMartino slumped inert over opposite sides of the desk, in a room where half of every available surface, including the floor, was littered with packaging and half-eaten remains from every kind of take-out food delivery available in the Lawndale area.

'Oh no!' Onepu exclaimed. She turned to Jane protectively, and spoke in a frantic whisper. 'This is terrible! They've killed each other! Jane, you shouldn't have to see this! I shouldn't have brought you here!'

But even as she spoke, although she was trying to block Jane's view, Jane could see Taylor taking a small mirror from a pocket, wiping it, and then holding it in front of DeMartino's mouth, and Jane could even see the mist on it when Taylor raised it to his eyes. He wiped it again and repeated the test with Li, with the same result.

Jane wished Sonny could have been there to watch. She photographed the scene with her mind's eye for a future painting.

'They're not dead', Taylor said contemptuously, with a scornful look at Onepu, and at that instant Li roused and started muttering about her dream. Then she woke fully, and then so did DeMartino. For a moment Li was relieved and DeMartino distraught that they had only dreamed signing the contract, but after another moment Taylor took the signed document from the hand DeMartino was still unconsciously clutching it in.

'We have a contract!' Onepu said. 'The strike is over! We can go back to teaching the children! Anthony, you did it!'

But DeMartino and Li had both collapsed again.

* * *

After the strike had been settled, Sonny heard about the results of the test Mrs Stoller had set for his class while he'd been otherwise occupied. Stoller had been impressed by the number of As: she said the class were the smartest and biggest first-graders she'd ever taught. Even Brittany, with only two out of the three colors on the US flag correct, was officially recognized for another C-student performance.

Kevin flunked, but what really gravelled him was not getting a gold star like Brittany's.

But Sonny only heard about this later. In the meantime, he had already tested his own class, graded the papers, and handed them back. He'd decided on a single essay question (minimum word limit—200): 'What is __Romeo and Juliet__ about?'

One of Quinn's most persistent admirers—Joey, Jamie, or Jeffy—the one with the red hair, anyway—was thrilled with his 'B'. He took it as a sign that Sonny agreed with his theory that Mercutio 'had a thing for' Romeo.

'No', Sonny said, 'but you argued your point well, and I thought your ideas for keeping him out of the locker room were original, if a little closed-minded.'

This last point had been crucial. Sonny would have had no time for a student who was trying to curry favor with a gay 'teacher' by seeing gay angles everywhere (or, still worse, trying to win 'favors' from that same 'teacher'—if Jeffy, Joey, or Jamie wanted help coming out, he'd have to get it from somebody else). But the reflexive prejudice in the second part of the essay suggested that a degree of flakiness was the more likely explanation: too much flakiness to get an 'A', but plenty enough for a 'B'. Unless it was a deviously manipulative double-bluff, in which case a 'B' was still the right grade.

Sandi, and Tiffany, on the other hand, had adopted the exact 'copy off each other' strategy that Sonny had foreseen leading to disaster. When they saw their 'D-minus' results, Sandi protested.

Stacy at least had the grace to acknowledge that the choice had been an error. Sonny didn't want to mention the mistake was not copying off of Stacy or Quinn.

They'd only escaped flunking because Sonny had given them extra credit for realizing the connection between the movie and the play. He'd still marked them down for failing to recognize that in Shakespeare's version, Romeo never went by the name 'Leonardo' and never took a swim in his clothes.

Sandi's vexation at Quinn and Stacy over the test was increased when she saw that Both had received a 'B-plus'. She started dropping heavy hints about Quinn's 'relationship' with the teacher and about everything being 'relative'.

Quinn, in response, did not let the growing attention of the whole class deter her from defending the way Sonny had tried to make the best of a bad situation, nor was she deterred by Sandi's intensified hinting about the almost __sisterly__ way she was taking sides with him. Instead, much to Sonny's interest, she responded by proving herself his true sister with a subtler and deadlier veiled threat. Indeed, she'd got hold of a piece of kryptonite. Although with tactical precision Quinn did not name any of the players, anybody who knew the little monster Griffins would recognize them in the story, and it would have been just like them to pass on pictures of fifth-grade Sandi wearing huge braces 'to a friend, who hasn't shown them to anybody out of the goodness of her heart … __yet.__ '

Sandi had the wit to be cowed, but Quinn wasn't finished. 'Besides, why shouldn't I act sisterly towards him?' She turned to look at Sonny. 'After all … I'm his sister.'

At what seemed to be the sight of a new opening, Sandi revived. She leaned forward to Stacy and Tiffany and said, 'Did you hear that? Oh my gosh! Quinn just admitted that weirdo is her brother!'

Stacy leaned comfortably over the back of her chair and gave Sandi an eyebrow flash. 'Well, um, of course he is, Sandi. We knew that.'

Tiffany chimed in with support. 'We were just being polite about it.'

 _ _My work here is done__ , Sonny thought. __My little sister is all grown up, and the Fashion Club, know it or not, is doomed.__ He allowed both corners of his mouth to turn slightly upward.

Sandi, not liking Stacy standing up to her, turned in her chair. "And of course your Gay BFF gives you a good grade."

Stacy, not to be intimidated, responded. "Of course he did because I wrote a well thought out response. I'm actually a little upset I only got a B+. I'll have to ask him why and see what it would take to get an even better grade."

It was at that dramatically appropriate moment that Ms Li's dazed voice came over the public address system to make a disjointed announcement in which the one thing clear was that the teachers would return to work the next day.

The redheaded boy raised his hand to tell Sonny that he thought he'd been a pretty good teacher. He had nothing to curry favor for any more. Maybe in his confused way he wasn't really homophobic.

'Thanks, Jamie, Jeffy, or Joey', Sonny said. 'For the record, some of you aren't half-bad students. You know who you are.'

He could see Quinn and Stacy were smiling. Well, he could live with that. It wasn't the sort of day that came round very often.

He got confirmation of that in the evening, when Quinn came into his room, feeling uncomfortable again because Sandi had repeated, and made direct, her accusation about how Quinn had got her B-plus from Sonny. Sonny asked her to consider how he could live with himself if he displayed generosity to her by giving her an unearned grade. Immediately grasping his logic buoyed up Quinn's spirits, and she reciprocated by telling him that she could no more be nice to him. He confirmed his full understanding of this remark.

'God only knows what this little foray of yours into teacher geekland cost me in social status', said Quinn.

'I feel your pain', Sonny lied.

'Well. Good night then.'

'Good night', Sonny said, and then, as Quinn turned and started to leave the room, '… __sis__.'

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Lucky Strike' by Peter Elwell**_**


	10. Chapter 10

**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different** **JTL Version**

 ** _ **60\. False Impressions**_**

Stacy looked up and down the hallway as she approached Sonny, verifying that they were alone and unobserved, something he had satisfied himself of more promptly with the benefit of more experienced technique.

'Um … Sonny—'

Sonny just nodded.

She gave him a quick kiss. 'I was wondering—can I ask you something?'

Sonny didn't even nod. He just waited.

'Um … well, do you remember when they had that "Art In The Park"?'

Sonny remembered 'Art In The Park'. That had been the real beginning of Jane's latest art adventure. But there had been a prologue …

* * *

Sonny had gone round to the Lanes' to witness Jane filming a music video for Mystik Spiral. The project had been derailed when the fog machine exploded, triggering the collapse of the gazebo they'd been using as a set. Trent, Jane, and Sonny had gone back into the house (the rest of the band had gone off together, allegedly traumatized) and Sonny and Jane had been looking out the kitchen window at the ruins when a tall, vague, blond man had come into the room. He'd greeted Trent and Jane, with hugs, and then come to a puzzled halt in front of Sonny. From the apparent intimacy of his acquaintance with Lane siblings, Sonny had deduced he must be one, presumably Wind, since that was the only other brother—which could also be why Wind (if that's who it was) had been puzzled by Sonny's own presence. Sonny had experienced a horrible feeling that Wind was about to mistake him, by default, for Summer or Penny, and had decided to give him another option.

Thinking at first to give his real name, he thought against it. Trent was ok with him hanging out with Jane. He knew Sonny was, seeing, Stacy. Wasn't interested in Jane that way. Wind might not pick up on that and since Sonny wanted to avoid any future misunderstandings that would result in beatings, he came up with a new name. 'I'm Twinkle. But you can call me "Twink".'

'Hey, Wind', Trent had said, confirming Sonny's guess and breaking up the awkwardness, and then Jane had asked Wind what he was doing there. Wind's latest wife had, it emerged, locked him out of the kitchen, and Wind had taken advice from somebody or something called a 'life consultant' not to interfere. So he'd returned to the family home to get something to eat. He'd been diverted from that goal, however, by horror at the destruction of the gazebo where, or so he had told them, the Lane parents took their children at birth to decide names. He'd wanted it fixed.

'Um … Wind', Jane had said, 'I don't know how to break this to you, but I don't think Mommy and Daddy will be bringing us home any new brothers or sisters.'

'What about Twink?' Wind had said, flinging out an arm in Sonny's direction.

'It's been quite a while now since I was born. Jane's right.'

'No!' Wind had been ready to collapse into tears at the loss of the 'Naming Gazebo', and insistent on its restoration. To raise the necessary funds (the Lane parents being once again out of the country for artistic purposes)—and because, she said, she liked the idea of 'the harvest of my inner torment on display right next to the falafel cart'—Jane had adopted Trent's suggestion of selling some of her paintings at 'Art In The Park'.

* * *

Mailbox decorations, T-shirts with the faces of dogs, mice made out of clam-shells, caricatures drawn in five minutes, children's fashion, pinwheels, weeping clowns—'Well, we are in the park, but I'm failing to see the art portion' had been Sonny's remark to Stacy as they strolled through. When Jane had hailed them from the booth where she'd been displaying her paintings, Sonny had said, 'One of these things is not like the others.'

Jane hadn't managed to sell anything before their arrival. It hadn't helped that the first thing everybody noticed when they came up was the fact that Jane had chosen to hang upside down her centrepiece, a copy of __The Starry Night__. Even Jane's biggest fan, Ms Defoe, had said the same thing. Sonny and Stacy had hung around the booth to create an appearance of interest and activity. Despite that, or just as likely because of that, Jane had managed only one sale, to Ms Onepu, who'd come by with Mr DeMartino. She'd explained that with the extra income she now had thanks to the 'brilliant leadership' of 'Anthony', she could afford to give the material encouragement that an exceptional student like Jane deserved. 'Oh, and I hope you don't mind my mentioning it—but I'm sure you'd want to know—you're so dedicated to your art—you've accidentally hung the Van Gogh copy upside down.'

'No, I painted it upside down. I hung it right side up.'

There had been five painful minutes of Onepu's apologies before DeMartino, surreptitiously signaled by Sonny, had managed to get her out of there. But the really important sale, the one that led to all the subsequent developments, had been heralded by the next onlooker's words.

'Hey, did you paint this?'

'I know, I know, it's upside down.'

'Of course it is. Hanging a famous masterpiece upside down allows the viewer to see its beauty totally independent of its content. I love it.'

The man had turned out to be a gallery owner who hired artists to paint copies of Old Masters. He hadn't just wanted to buy one of Jane's works, he had made a deal to sell as many Van Goghs as she could paint, taking 'only' a sixty percent commission.

Sonny had been able to understand Jane's wanting the money, even forty percent of it. Money had been the point of the whole 'Art In The Park' enterprise in the first place. And it had been nice when Jane had paid for pizza and the slices had two toppings. But then she'd accumulated sufficient earnings to pay for the gazebo reconstruction. Her first instinct had been to tender her resignation but Gary, the gallery owner, had persuaded her to withdraw it by the offer of an increase in her cut to sixty percent. She said she could use the money to finance her own work. But she wasn't painting her own work, even in art class.

Stacy had seen the Fashion Club soon after and broke off to hang out with them. Sonny didn't know what happened after that.

'There was this guy there drawing caricatures'—Sonny noticed that Stacy did not stumble over the word—'and the four of us, I mean the Fashion Club, decided we'd get a group portrait done. But when it was finished it was … I mean, it wasn't … exactly what … everybody expected. So we held a meeting and the Club voted that we'd been slandered by the way the picture had been drawn, because it looked bad, and that we needed to do something for justice against the guy, I mean the one who drew it. So Quinn and Sandi talked to your Mom, because she's a lawyer, but she kept telling them there wasn't anything that could be done legally. Now Tiffany's started saying we should ask her to help us find somebody to break his fingers, like in that show about those guys. But …'

When Stacy paused, Sonny prompted her by repeating her last word interrogatively.

Stacy looked down at her shoes. 'I know maybe the way the drawing made Sandi and Quinn and Tiffany look was a bit mean, but I think I looked really pretty in it and I liked it. So—I kept it, and I've hidden it, and none of the others know, but I want to keep it because I like it and I don't want them to find out and I don't really want anything to happen to the guy either, although I don't want the others to know that. But if your Mom can't help them, then maybe Sandi or Quinn will think of asking you for help because everybody knows how good you are at thinking up plans for getting the better of people'—Stacy was on the verge of hyperventilating now—'and I was worried about what kind of plan you might come up with and what kind of things you might find out and—'

Sonny held up a hand to check her. 'Does Quinn look really bad in this picture?'

'Well—um—I guess so—I mean, I don't know— _ _Quinn__ said it made her face look like one big freckle and—'

Sonny held up his hand again. 'Your secret and your picture are safe from me. On the condition I get the chance to look at it some time.'

Stacy nodded breathlessly before checking to make sure they were alone again and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

* * *

Dealing with Stacy's worries had been easy enough for Sonny. Dealing with Jane's, not so much so. She'd dreamed up a theory, which she started expounding to Sonny as they went for a walk, that Gary was selling her copies as the originals, making millions selling counterfeits.

Sonny said, 'To finance his secret robot army, no doubt.'

'I'm serious. We're going to head over there right now and enact a sting operation.'

'A sting operation? He knows who we are, how do you figure we're going to be able to pull off a sting?'

'We'll think of something.'

Sonny looked at Jane quizzically. 'You don't know what a sting operation is, do you?'

'Don't try any of your rhetorical gymnastics on me, Morgendorffer. Do you want to help me expose Gary or don't you?'

Sonny permitted himself the luxury of a sigh. 'Listen, the way a sting operation would work would be if we got somebody to go into the gallery, like an undercover cop, and express an interest in a Van Gogh, or some other Old Master. Then, if Gary commissioned you to paint the thing the undercover agent asked for, we'd wait until Gary delivered it for payment as the genuine article and then bust him. Now do you see? It's not going to work if I go in there and it's absolutely not going to work if you do.'

'Then you'll just have to come up with some other plan for us, aren't you? It's what you do.'

Sonny added an eye roll to a sigh. 'Fine, but you have to wear the moustache.'

Jane looked at him quizzically. 'And what's the logic behind that?'

'I'm the one who's going to have to put up with taking care of facial hair or shaving it off for the rest of my life. This is your turn. Besides, my smaller size better fits me to the other role of hiding in the ceiling vent.'

This conversation had carried them as far as Gary's gallery, Gary's Gallery. (Did that name suggest a man with the imagination to run a counterfeiting ring?)

'Well, I've got a plan', said Jane. 'I'll grab Gary's invoice book from behind the counter to see who bought my last painting. All you have to do is distract him.'

'And just how am I supposed to do that, Mr Phelps?'

'Hey, __you're__ the one who __dreams__ plots for __Mission: Impossible__. You'll think of something.' She opened the door and they went in.

Gary greeted Jane and inquired after the painting she was working on for him. Jane introduced Sonny as a friend interested in 'art recreations'.

'Um, yes', Sonny said. 'I am very interested in art recreations.' __Could this sound any more as if came out of a can?__ he thought. Luckily, Gary turned out to be devoted enough to the subject to be drawn into an exposition by the most unconvincing pretense of interest. He showed Sonny around, discoursing freely, until Jane, presumably having obtained what she wanted from the invoice book, came up to them and interrupted Gary to tell him that she and Sonny needed to leave.

'Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you', Gary said. 'Can you do O'Keeffe? The guy who bought your last painting, Steve Taylor, wants one for his wife's birthday.'

'Steve Taylor?' said Sonny, with a significant look at Jane as Brittany's father was named, and softly hummed a little of the __Mission: Impossible__ theme to underline the point.

'Steve Taylor bought my last painting?' said Jane.

'He's a regular customer', Gary said. 'Do you know him?'

After that, of course, nothing would satisfy Jane short of an investigatory visit to the Taylors'. Sonny excused himself from accompanying her. He had visions of Kevin Thompson asking him 'If you're so gay, why are you hanging around Britt's place?' and the prospect bored and depressed him, as the prospect of any interaction with Kevin did. He agreed to meet Jane afterwards for a debrief.

When Sonny did meet Jane, she was the one who seemed depressed.

'You would have enjoyed the anti-climax', she said.

'Well, go on, share with me.'

'The first joke was when Brittany answered the door. She was comfortable enough with having me there once she found out that I wasn't expecting to hang out with her. She even started telling me about her dad's art collection, most of which seemed to be either about or made from dead animals.'

Sonny nodded. 'I've been in that house, remember.'

Jane nodded back. 'Well, after that she showed me the Van Gogh copy that I painted, but she thought it was an original. Then her father came in and laughed at the idea. He knows he could never afford an original Van Gogh.' Her shoulders slumped. 'He told me he found a great gallery that's got a bunch of "hacks" churning out copies. He even told me they were "decent" for the price, and then he showed me one spot where the brushwork was kind of lazy.' She heaved a huge sigh. 'Even a cheeseball like Mr Taylor could tell I'm a hack.'

'Coming from a guy whose home is decorated in early petting zoo? I wouldn't worry about it.'

Jane wasn't comforted, and Sonny's next effort, pointing out that with the number of copies she'd been doing for Gary they couldn't all be her best work, didn't help either. She admitted that the copying work had given her creative block, which she'd never had before.

'Your creativity has been channelled into other areas, like inventing paranoid delusions centred around non-existent art counterfeiting rings.'

'Yeah, my ego couldn't take just being a hack. I had to be a super-hack. Or maybe I just wanted Gary to be a con-man so I could quit without remorse.'

'Sure, because it's not like you'll have any remorse if you stay.'

Sonny was rewarded by the signs of spirit returning to Jane's face.

'Look, I got into this in the first place to get that damn gazebo rebuilt. Those slouches of workmen Trent found have been lollygagging around while I've nearly gone nuts. Trent's supposed to be supervising them—'

'Trent?'

'—right, my mistake. So if he can't provide supervision, he can provide labor, but that gazebo's going to be finished today. And once I've taken care of that, I'll go tell Gary I'm quitting for good.'

Sonny was relieved. 'Good. Mind if I drop by your place later on to see the finished product?'

'Sure', said Jane. 'And thanks for helping me sort this out.'

'Me?' said Sonny. 'I didn't even hide in a ceiling vent.'

On that amicable note they parted. When Sonny showed up at the Lanes', the new gazebo was finished, Jane had Gary's gracious acceptance of her resignation to report (he'd told her she could come back any time), and Trent was groaning after unaccustomed effort, too sore to play his guitar.

'You know', Jane said, 'maybe I will do a painting of the gazebo. I can call it __Descent Into Madness__.'

Sonny said, 'Or __Gazebo__.'

A moment later the Lane parents walked into the yard, back from their latest expedition in search of artistic inspiration, and noticed three people sitting around the gazebo. That set them to reminiscing about it—not knowing, naturally, that it was only a replacement for the one they remembered. Their reminiscences were different from Wind's. They'd only invented the story about its being a 'Naming Gazebo' because they wanted him to appreciate the name they'd given him and abandon his idea of changing it to 'Ronald'. Really they regarded it as the sort of ugly thing fit only for country-house phonies. In fact, their suggestion was to get some axes and tear it down as soon as possible.

'Twinkle', Jane said, 'I'm going to kill your big brother.'

Jane's parents looked at each other, puzzled. They wanted to know who 'Twinkle' was.

Sonny said, 'It's a gazebo name.'

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Fizz Ed' by Glenn Eichler and 'Art Burn' by Dan Vebber**_**


	11. Chapter 11

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 ** _ **61\. Rivals For Attention**_**

The damage began with Helen talking seriously to Quinn. Sonny knew not to expect any good to come of that.

That his mother should hope for effect from talking seriously to Quinn didn't exactly surprise him. He could think of a few possible explanations for her to behave that way, and all of them bored and depressed him.

That Quinn should choose this occasion to break pattern by taking what their mother said seriously—well, he could think of a few explanations for that, too, when he eventually found out about it, but all of them scared him.

The trigger had been Sonny's receipt of a present from Stacy, a second edition, something whose significance was alien to Quinn. In an act of cruelty to both her children, their mother had explained that it was a sign of maturity to find one person you wanted to date exclusively, somebody caring and compatible who knew and cared how to find you a present that was important to you.

"Dating? Mo-om! Sonny is gay."

Helen pursed her lips together. "Right, what I meant was," She looked at Sonny.

Sonny sighed and realized what she wanted. "Quinn, I'm not gay. Stacy and I are dating. Being the social outcast that I am we came up with the story that I was gay so we could see each other with out hurting her popularity too much."

He waits for the response. His mother waited for a response. Instead, Quinn turned and left the room.

After a second or two of silence, Helen spoke up. 'You know, Sonny', she had continued, 'Dad and I really haven't had the chance to really get to know Stacy.' Sonny heard the footsteps of doom. 'Why don't you invite her over for dinner?'

For form's sake, Sonny had replied. 'Because I haven't taken complete leave of my senses.'

Sonny had not gone on to say that this was the second-worst idea he'd ever heard in his life, ranking right after the one about his parents bringing home a little sister for him from the hospital. Actively trying to discourage his mother was, he knew, a marginal strategy at best. What he had working in his favor was that she would surely rely on him to pass on the invitation and make the arrangements with Stacy, which should give him a fair chance of stalling until his preferred night for having Stacy round for dinner—the one after Armageddon. Well, any night after Armageddon would do: he wouldn't want to be unreasonably picky.

He told Jane as they walked to school. She understood, or at least partly. She knew all about the way Sonny's father carried on, but her first thought was about how that might embarrass Sonny. Sonny had to clarify for her.

'It's more that he'll provide Stacy with a festive night of nightmares. If she just doesn't think he's an..." Sonny can't think of the right descriptive word. His father had many facets that only those like Sonny could see. One night of close exposure wouldn't give the chance to see that. "My dad deserves better than that.' Sonny's eyes slid off to one side. 'Sort of.'

'Well, I don't think you're giving Stacy enough credit. She's met your parent's before."

'Oh, yeah. For all of five seconds at a time.'

Jane gave Sonny a quizzical look. 'I don't suppose you could get __your__ father to go off to Greece for six months to sketch the sunset', she said with unhelpful accuracy.

What Sonny had not mentioned to Jane was Quinn's request to be allowed to invite a boyfriend to dinner if Sonny was inviting Stacy. Sonny had assumed that their mother's limitation, to steady boyfriends only, would rule that out. The frightening news that Quinn was seriously preparing to select a steady boyfriend leaked back to him through Stacy, after Quinn made a formal announcement to an 'emergency' meeting of the Fashion Club.

Sandi had fully supported her, the real reason (the one she didn't tell Quinn, but shared with Tiffany and Stacy) being 'there'll be more guys for the rest of us'. Quinn must not have told the rest of the club that Stacy was seeing him. The whole Club had helped Quinn pick her way through the delicate selection process for the one perfect 'Mr Right': height, hair, skin, popularity, bone structure, color sense, car, wardrobe, musculature, luxury possessions, ability to service Quinn's diverse needs … (Sonny's contribution to the list of criteria, when he heard Quinn talking about it, had been 'ability to fix major appliances', and Quinn had immediately accepted it.) Eventually Quinn held screening interviews at the pizzeria where Sonny and Jane were eating, and they were able to observe her rejecting virtually every boy at the school for failing to meet her exacting standards in one respect or another. (She did it in jig time, too. 'If I were stranded on a deserted island, what is the one item you'd bring me?' 'A boat! With flares, and life boats, and the Coast Guard, and … and the Navy!' 'Wrong wrong wrong! The correct answer is "sunscreen"!')

But Sandi, otherwise the queen of exacting standards, was determined to eliminate Quinn from competition by tethering her to a steady boyfriend, and finally Quinn was induced to come down in favor of Jamie (whichever one he was). When she came into the kitchen to announce this to the family, Sonny wasn't sure whether she'd chosen a favorable or an unfavorable time to do so. He'd been hard at work trying to concentrate on a crossword at the same time as continuing to stall his mother's attempts to get Stacy over for dinner. So Quinn's intervention might possibly have served as a helpful diversion of their mother's attention. On the other hand, Helen had already been partly distracted by her husband's antics in pursuit of his latest manic obsession, a squirrel that had been 'terrorizing the neighborhood' (that is, knocking over the garbage cans: Sonny's father set the bar low when defining 'terrorism'). And then she'd been drawn out of the room altogether by a phone call from her boss, who apparently wanted her advice about a plan to sue UNICEF. Sonny couldn't help thinking that there could be tactical advantages in having multiple distractions assist him against his mother at separate times, instead of all at once. For one thing, once she had gone to take her call, and Jake had gone out into the back yard to set a cage trap for the squirrel, Quinn had nobody left to conscript as an audience for her latest personal 'drama' but somebody who any __rational__ person could have seen was trying to concentrate on a crossword.

Naturally it was only a simple exercise for Sonny to get rid of Quinn. She took his word for it that now she had a steady boyfriend she should be with him all day and on the phone to him all night. Her objection that Sonny himself wasn't always with Stacy he deflected effortlessly by pointing out that it was different because he and Stacy had to maintain their cover.

Unfortunately, even as Quinn left the room, their mother returned. True, at that point she was still on the phone—but a moment later she broke off the call when Jake, out in the back yard, started screaming. Sonny and his mother looked out the window. Their father and husband had his hand inside the trap and couldn't get it loose.

Helen and Sonny looked at each other. They could hear Jake screaming some more. Helen's understanding of the situation was written all over her face. Sonny's face, thanks to a decade of practice, was not so easily readable. He let her speak.

'You're worried about your father's behavior.'

How could Sonny not be? He hadn't tried to deny it to Jane. He'd confess it to his mother if he had to—but did he have to?

'Mom, now that Quinn … says she's got a steady boyfriend, are you going to invite him to dinner as well? You know, to encourage her? You did tell her that once she had a steady boyfriend you'd love to invite him for dinner, and that's when she got one. And with her history she probably needs the encouragement.'

'You want to encourage your sister and her new steady boyfriend? That's what you want? Out of pure altruism?'

Sonny looked at his mother. 'You're not going to believe that, are you.'

'With your history? No. Besides, I think it would be nice to have both of you bring your special friends over for dinner. It would really make a special occasion of it.'

'The thing is'—Sonny hesitated for effect, even though what he was going to say was not strictly untrue—'I don't know how Quinn's boyfriend might react to a social occasion with Quinn's brother.'

"Why not?"

Sonny sighed. "Except for the rare, rarer than a Loch Ness monster spotting, does she even admit I'm related to her. Some times I'm a nanny or a foreign exchange student. When she feels gracious she'll say I'm a distant cousin. I don't know how her date would like eating with her distant foreign exchange nanny."

Sonny's mother didn't hesitate. Obviously not believing him. 'If that's how Quinn's boyfriend feels, it's something we all want to know as soon as possible.'

Unaccustomedly discomfited, Sonny shifted slightly in his chair. 'There is still the other thing you mentioned. I understand Dad …'

'Really?'

'… but now we're talking about not just one person who's not a blood relative, but two. Stacy's at least met him a few times, but Quinn's new boyfriend … well, he might not appreciate Dad's—um—energetic reactions to certain stimuli.'

Sonny's mother was curious to know what stimuli he was talking about. He should have foreseen that.

'Oh, you know', he said limply. 'Everything.'

His mother gave a sigh of acquiescence. 'Sonny, I'll make you a deal. I'll have a talk with your father about his conduct. You call Stacy about dinner. What do you say?'

Was this what growing up felt like? Sonny had mixed feelings. 'Wasn't there a time when our deals involved cash?'

* * *

At least Sonny could console himself with the thought that his advice to Quinn about unremitting closeness with her boyfriend had had some effect. He hadn't seen her again that evening at all, but when she came into the room the next day after school, as he was watching __Sick, Sad World__ , she reported that she and Jamie had broken up. Sonny well knew Quinn's inexhaustible capacity for telephone conversation, but the odds were good that her new boyfriend hadn't shared it. Anyway, the news that Jamie had been replaced as her 'steady' boyfriend by Joey made even less difference to Sonny than it would have if he'd made the perfunctory effort to remember how to distinguish her admirers by name.

What Sonny didn't welcome was Quinn picking up the television remote and starting to change channels as easily as she changed boyfriends. With Quinn, what worked once should work again. He suggested that she should be at football practice watching Joey.

'It's too humid', she said. 'My hair might frizz.'

Sonny gave the crank another turn. 'Brittany's there, supporting Kevin. She has hair', he noted.

Sonny was a little put out when Quinn parried: as a cheerleader, Brittany's attendance was required. But he was not without a powerful riposte: no cheerleader herself, Jane nevertheless attended all Tom's luge races. Was the truth that Quinn was just an unsupportive girlfriend? (Of course: but she was hardly going to avow it.) A hit, a palpable hit! Quinn stood up and flounced out: to watch Joey at football practice or to buy frizz-proof hair conditioner, Sonny didn't care as long as he was able to reclaim the remote and __Sick, Sad World__.

Of course Quinn came back again later, but escaping that eternal return was beyond Sonny's expectations. This time he was trying to read while Quinn, waiting for Joey to arrive for their date, gabbled on the phone to Stacy. Not at all to Sonny's surprise, it was clear from their chatter that Quinn would have preferred to be with Stacy and the rest of the Fashion Club, but by now the 'steady boyfriend' concept seemed to have its teeth sunk in her as securely as a leg-hold trap. Even finding out that Sandi was dating some boy Quinn had thought liked __her__ did not provide enough leverage to release her. She didn't hear the sarcastic remarks Sonny was making, either, although that was no rarity.

It was just Joey's bad luck that Stacy told Quinn about a boy band appearing in concert the moment before he rang the doorbell. She opened the door and told him to take her to the concert instead of the restaurant—the choice she had previously insisted on. Naturally the concert was sold out. Quinn dumped Joey immediately for being unsupportive.

After Quinn slammed the door, Sonny said, 'Wow. A whole day. At least you'll have the memories.'

'I give up!' said Quinn. 'This boyfriend stuff is too time-consuming.'

At that moment their mother walked in to tell Sonny that she'd spoken to his father and that they were all set for dinner on Sunday night, and to suggest to Quinn that she invite her boyfriend as well.

The original suggestion of 'dinner with the family' had been the trigger for Quinn's search for a steady boyfriend. She couldn't tell her mother now that she'd abandoned the idea. She looked as if she'd discovered, just when she thought she'd escaped the leg-hold trap, that she'd chewed off the wrong leg.

Meanwhile, Sonny was thinking about what his mother had said about having 'talked' with his father. She obviously thought that meant something. Sonny was not reassured. He was still on edge on Sunday evening. He went into the front yard to wait there so that he could meet Stacy even before the front door, but when Stacy arrived Sonny had not yet found a strategy. He greeted her and tried to make light of the situation, but she only responded with a disturbingly positive attitude. Sonny persevered with an awkward segue to the subject of his father and his potential to be what Sonny described, with unwonted charity, as 'a little … eccentric.'

Stacy said, 'So I've heard.'

'From who?'

'You!'

Sonny was unsettled (Stacy's grin didn't help). He could only agree limply. Once they were inside he made another hesitant start, fumbling out a second euphemism to describe his father, 'sensitive'.

'So', said Stacy, 'no bright lights or loud noises? Or do you like, use the fabric softner stuff with out chemicals?'

Sonny had nothing left to say except Stacy's name in a warning tone of voice.

'Don't worry', advised Stacy, unsuccessfully, as Quinn came down the stairs. 'I want him to like me too, you know.'

Quinn interrupted to ask them not to embarrass her in front of her 'new serious boyfriend'. It was the first Sonny had heard that she'd taken up with Jeffy. Was she expecting third time to be the charm?

Anyway, if he couldn't explain to Stacy about his father, at least he could respond to Quinn's request not to embarrass her. 'I guess the bear suits are out.'

Stacy asked how long Quinn and Jeffy had been together. After having been on the lengthy end of several phone conversations she should have known.

Sonny wasn't sure if Stacy was taking a dig at Quinn or not. He used to think Stacy was a little, obsessed, with his sister.

'It's not the quantity of time, but the quality.'

Now where could Quinn have learned something like that? Sonny said, 'You'll make a great neglectful mother some day.' Another inspiration struck Sonny, or an old one returning. He'd had fair success planting in Quinn's head the idea that if you had a steady boyfriend you should spend all available time together. How far could he run with that one? Acquisition of adjoining cemetery plots as the ultimate test of commitment? He started playing up as best he could to Stacy, who was thrown for just one instant (not long enough for __Quinn__ to notice) and then joined in like a trouper, even taking Sonny's hand and inventing a nauseating pet name for him on the spot. Sonny made eyes at her, doing the best he could to camp it up. He knew he'd never deceive the genuine article, but Quinn might fall for it. Then Jeffy rang the doorbell, and when Quinn answered she tried (and, unlike Stacy, failed hopelessly) to invent a convincing pet name for him on the spot, and completed his confusion by telling him that they needed to talk about cemetery plots.

Diverting though this was, it didn't get Sonny any closer to a solution of the problem with his father. Once all six were seated at the dinner table, conversation began harmlessly enough with Sonny's mother exchanging with Stacy and Jeffy the banalities of the giver and recipients of hospitality. Then his father joined in to say that it was great to have some more people around the house. He leaned over and nudged Jeffy in the side. 'This place could do with a little more scratching and sweating', he went on. 'Right, Sonny?'

Sonny's eyes widened helplessly and he realized, to his shame, that his head had swiveled involuntarily to direct a mute appeal at his mother. He recovered himself and altered his expression to a more naturally stony one which he expected her to read as 'What about our deal?' She cleared her throat pointedly at her husband, who responded with a puzzled 'Huh?'

Stacy smoothly picked up the slack, saying, 'So, what's new, Mr Morgendorffer?' Oh so very briefly Sonny thought he might know what it was like to like Stacy, but within fifteen seconds of commencing a __pro forma__ response to Stacy's question, Sonny's father was ranting about squirrels again. His wife gave him a warning reminder, but he only protested with wounded innocence, 'But she asked!'

In strict factuality, up to that point Stacy had not explicitly expressed any interest in squirrels; but now she did, siding with Jake, because squirrels had eaten all the wheat thins in the Rowe cellar the previous winter. Sonny remembered Stacy's assurance that she wanted Sonny's father to like her. Sonny hadn't realized at the time that it was a disguised trap. 'Stacy!' he said, with a foolish uselessness that just made him feel worse.

'What?' said Stacy. 'They did.' Now she was playing the wounded innocent too, and plainly with truth on her side.

Sonny's mother made one last effort to save the situation by asking Jeffy about school, but, for the hat-trick, Jeffy too was more interested in talking about squirrels and how to catch them—so interested (and this was a phenomenon Sonny had never observed with any of Quinn's admirers before) that he completely disregarded a protesting Quinn. (Or was that why Jeffy had been her third choice?) Jeffy recommended peanut butter as an effective bait, and this reminded Sonny's father that he'd prepared a fresh batch of Thai peanut sauce the previous night, undeterred by two disastrous failures in the preceding three weeks.

'Jake', his wife said at this news, 'you didn't!' (The smell of the first batch hadn't cleared from the house for three days and she'd banned him from tipping the second batch down the sink for fear of what it might do to the pipes.)

Sonny didn't want to make another addition to the accumulation of limp ineffectual protests. At least he still had satire. 'I thought I smelled something at breakfast', he said, 'but I just thought a neighbor had died.'

His mother had still not accepted that she was playing the role of the apocryphal version of King Canute, but her last attempt at remonstrance was interrupted by her phone's ringing. Her atypical state of mind was illustrated when she made one attempt to get out of talking with the caller, predictably her reliably unreliable boss, but half a minute later she was halfway out of the room, trying to help him understand the difference between UNICEF and Uniroyal.

That left only Quinn's flailing protests to fail to deter Jeffy when Jake asked him to help set up the squirrel trap, and when Stacy spotted the vermin in question in the back yard, all three of them charged outside together.

Sonny went over to the window to watch them at work with the trap. Of course, his worst fears for the evening had not come to pass: something even more ridiculous was happening. He was just saying so, when Quinn gave a great cry of distress.

' _ _Augh!__ I can't believe that Jeffy just deserted me like that! I'll never have a boyfriend! I'll never be in a relationship like you and Stacy! I'm a complete failure!'

She fled the room wailing, but strangely even this did not make Sonny feel that the evening had not been a total loss. He found himself reflecting that the brotherly thing to do would be to go and console her.

However brothers did that.

But there was a bowl of rolls on the table. So he helped himself to one.

His mother came back into the room, but she was still on the phone hosing her boss down, so Sonny just took a bite of his roll. Then she finished the call, noticed the dinner party's sudden shortfall, and asked Sonny where everybody had gone. When he told her, she asked him for an explanation, and he felt oddly deficient. He did the best he could. But why had his father, Stacy, and Jeffy all charged out together?

'I've heard people talk about this thing called bonding, but if it's always been a closed book to me, I don't suppose the concept's going to enlighten you at all, is it?'

'I was asking about Quinn.'

'Oh. That. Let me see now. I think as usual she's got hold of the wrong end of the stick, because before she ran out she said she was a failure as Jeffy had deserted her and she'd never be in a relationship like Stacy and me; whereas an objective examination of the evidence of what just happened here would show Jeffy treating her almost exactly the same way Stacy treated me.'

'And that was all?'

Sonny twitched, but he wasn't sure whether his mother noticed. It occurred to him that sometimes pranks could be more fun when somebody found out about them. 'Well, it's possible that Quinn … happened to get the wrong end of the stick about some other aspects of how serious relationships are supposed to work …'

Maybe she had seen him twitch. 'Uh-huh', she said. 'Just what would some of these aspects be?'

'Oh, I don't know … maybe things like being together twenty-four hours a day, hanging on each other's every word … his-and-hers cemetery plots …'

'Sonny, how could you mislead your sister like that!' His mother left the room, probably headed for Quinn's room to console her. Maybe she knew how to do that.

'Mother', Sonny replied to her question, but only after she'd gone, 'how could I not?'

He was alone in the room again. He looked out the window and saw Stacy and Jeffy high-fiving each other as his father picked up the cage trap with the rodent 'terrorist' now safely incarcerated in it. The three of them walked off with it. They were headed in the general direction of the car. His father would want to release the creature safely into a natural environment, and Stacy and Jeffy must be going along for the ride.

Everybody had left him. Wasn't that his deepest fear? Why was his mother only concerned about Quinn? He walked back to his seat and sat down again. On the one hand, total abandonment and isolation. On the other, shoestring potatoes. At least he wouldn't starve. In fact, there was an excellent meal to be eaten. If nobody else wanted any, he saw no reason for guilt about not sharing.

He never wavered from this view later.

He was getting ready for bed when the phone rang. After a ring or two Quinn picked it up.

He was surprised when she said it was for him. "Hello?"

"Hey, uh, Sonny." Stacy confessed to him that she'd had a great time with Sonny's father and Jeffy at a go-kart track that Jeffy had directed them to when he realized it was close to the place where they'd released the squirrel. Stacy even started to suggest that Sonny should accompany her there some time, to try go-karting. No doubt she was actuated by the best of motives, but her powers of reason and his memory started working again before she finished the sentence. And Sonny had to admit (to himself, that is, although he did later mention it also to Jane) that Stacy never had one critical thing to say about Sonny's father.

"That's good."

"Um, ok. But uh, I thought maybe, like,"

Sonny was tired, and full, and ready for bed. "We can talk tomorrow. I'm going to bed."

"Oh, ok. Um, goodnight."

"Goodnight."

As for Quinn, her mother succeeded in getting her to see that the acquisition or lack of a steady boyfriend was not definitive of maturity, the important thing being to do what made you happy, whether that meant having one boyfriend or a string of them. Quinn was in a buoyant condition induced by accepting this reassurance when she returned to the dining room. She was surprised that the others weren't there, so Sonny explained.

'Stacy went too?' Quinn said as she took a seat opposite Sonny.

'I guess part of me always knew that some day she'd return to the wild.'

Quinn was still showing a little unwonted disposition to philosophies. 'Sonny, I was thinking that maybe guys and girls just aren't meant to understand each other?' Sonny wasn't sure how to deal with this unfamiliar Quinn, but he was able to relax when she, like him, decided to let her attention be captured by the food.

Of course, she preferred the celery stalks. That was his sister.

The next time they had school, Sonny and Jane were sitting at their usual spot when Stacy sat down next to them. "Uh, this isn't your lunch hour."

"I know Sonny." She fidgeted with her hair. "I, I'm sorry about Sunday night. I like, just left."

Sonny sets his fork down. "You did. But you said you had a good time with my dad."

"I did! I hope he liked me too. I was so nervous. I know I went a little overboard but my father is the same way with those little rodents."

Jane excuses herself for more napkins leaving the two alone.

"It's ok Stacy. Really."

"Are you sure?" He nods. "Ok. I just felt so bad last night. You were, uh, short with me." He nods indicating she had the right word she was looking for. "So you're not mad?"

"No. I was just tired. And full. My mom made dinner for six and I may have had about three of them."

"Okay!" Now her bright smile was back. "I better go! I told the teacher I had to use the facilities." She reaches out and squeezes his hand under the table before getting up and leaving.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'One J At A Time' by Ron Corcillo and A J Poulin**_**

 **A/N Wasn't sure if I should have Stacy go off with Jake and Jeffy but the go kart racing... Love the idea of her being a race car driver. Easily amused.**


	12. Chapter 12

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 _ _ **62\. Not Being Stifled**__

When he let himself think back on it, Sonny admitted to himself that he might have been just a little jealous of Jane.

He'd been jealous of her over Evan (and the whole track team business) and he'd been jealous of her over Tom—and they'd had words both times, and at that same pizzeria. Of course, back then he'd had nobody—and thought that he wanted nobody, not __like that__. Now he had Stacy, which made it horribly unfair of him to be jealous of Jane's finding somebody. Maybe his misgivings about Nathan would be confirmed by a purely objective dispassionate judgment … but just maybe, something else was coloring his thinking. Sure, he had Stacy … but he hadn't found Stacy, not the way that Jane had found Tom or Nathan or... And he could never have just walked up to somebody and picked her up the way Jane had picked up Nathan and not just because … well, even if he'd wanted to pick up a random girl, or if he'd been a girl and had wanted to pick up a boy, he couldn't have done it with Jane's nonchalant effortlessness.

Uncharacteristically, he hadn't even __seen__ Nathan at the beginning. He'd been walking to the post office with Stacy and Jane. They'd been in a hurry to get there before it closed (it was the day the new wanted posters went up). Jane had been a few steps to the rear and had seen Nathan as she looked down the cross street from the intersection they'd already passed. She'd made an excuse and told them she'd catch them up later at the pizzeria, then turned down the cross street to enter the stationery store at the corner they were standing on.

When she'd met them later at the pizzeria, she'd been—there was no way to deny it—full of enthusiasm. She'd managed to strike up a conversation with Nathan in front of a big display of retro stationery. Sonny hadn't even been aware of the concept of retro stationery (fountain pens? sealing wax?). It fitted, though: Nathan was a big fan of __all__ things retro. Jane hadn't been able to stop raving about his cufflinks, and the big old-fashioned car with fins, among the rest. Sonny had started to think about some things retro that might not be so comfortable, but he'd hesitated about mentioning them, so instead he'd said something about the advisability of picking up perfect strangers. Maybe he had been a little jealous.

'Hey', Jane had said, 'if I didn't have the nerve to pick up guys, you would be stuck with me even more.'

That had made it too difficult for Sonny to dodge the issue. 'Well, I guess you don't have to worry about this one going behind your back to break up with you. He sounds strictly gentleman. 1910's before women had rights gentleman.'

Jane's tone had stiffened. 'This is me you're talking to, remember?' She had given a hard stare at Sonny, then at Stacy, then back at Sonny. 'I'm not getting involved with any more idiots, right? It's just that Nathan appreciates the beauty and elegance of post-war American design, and there's nothing wrong with that.'

Stacy had made an effort to ease the strain. 'I don't know', she had said lightly, 'I can like, hate the present too, but not enough to wear a flappy skirt deal. So unflattering.'

'He doesn't wear a zoot suit or what ever else. He's a snappy dresser in the classical-elegant sense. Plus, he has impeccable manners and a biting wit.'

'If you put it like that, I'll revise my opinion.' Sonny had been trying to lighten the mood. 'You make it sound as if maybe he will go behind your back with me. Just in a different way.'

Nobody had ever said that Sonny was any good at lightening the mood. Jane had scowled and stood up without even finishing her slice. 'Thanks for the encouragement. Maybe some time you can teach me how to pass judgment on somebody I've never met.'

Sonny's eyes had followed her as she walked out. 'She's going to be disappointed', he'd said.

Stacy had been more relaxed. 'Yeah', she'd joked, 'that's not really, like, the kind of thing you can teach.' Sonny had appreciated what Stacy was doing, but he'd still felt uncomfortable.

Maybe he had been just a little jealous.

Maybe next time he saw Jane and talked with her he should try to be a different person, or anyway a slightly different version.

It was longer than usual before the opportunity came along—in the hallway at school, where Sonny found Jane closing her locker. He'd already figured, when he didn't see her around, that she'd been spending time with Nathan. The __dress__ she was wearing provided additional confirmation. It wasn't a runner's outfit, even without the high-heeled shoes. Retro again. He'd meant to be conciliatory, but he couldn't help himself. He started making smart remarks about retro activities. He and Jane took little flicks at each other like that all the time. But this time she got defensive. It wasn't the first time that had happened, either, he'd been reminding himself of the precedents just the other day, but they weren't __good__ precedents. When she said, 'You don't have to put Nathan and me down just because you and Stacy are in a rut', he didn't like it; maybe Jane was feeling a parallel dislike. When he frowned as she walked angrily away, he wasn't sure whether he was frowning more at her or at himself.

He was still feeling uncertain enough, when Stacy suggested pizza after a movie, to repeat what Jane had said about their being in a rut, although Sonny combined it with another smart remark about the time machine Jane was co-piloting. He asked Stacy for confirmation about Nathan's being pretentious.

Stacy's response was not favorable. 'I don't know. I mean, we haven't even met him. He could be nice. If Jane likes him doesn't that mean you should?'

'Why?'

"Well, she likes you, so she likes certain people. What I heard about Tom he was a lot like you. So like, maybe Nathan is like you too. But different. You know?" Stacy starts to play with her hair.

"Maybe.' Sonny sighed. "Lets get some thing different than pizza." He also thought if they went to their normal place that Jane might be there and he needed more time to think about what Stacy had said.

The different place he chose was a cheesily themed chain restaurant. At least, Sonny supposed it was __meant__ to have a theme. Looking around at the décor, if that's what it was, as they waited for service, he realized that he couldn't have guessed what the intended theme was if his grade in Language Arts depended on it.

He talked with Stacy instead about Jane's social life and the impact on it if Nathan turned out to be a complete jerk. Stacy shared her concern, but suggested that they had to give Nathan a chance and let Jane make her own decisions. Sonny knew he couldn't disagree.

Then their server arrived and offered them a free side dish uninspiringly named with a warning 'Supreme' in the title. She had to. If she forgot to make the offer they'd get a free gift certificate good at any of the locations in the chain, whose name Sonny was now actively repressing. She was Stepford chipper explaining this, even though Sonny was ready to bet that the gift certificates came out of her wages.

Stacy looked at the expression on Sonny's face and understood better than most what it meant. After spending so much time together it had gotten easier for her.

Sonny was done with the place before they even ordered and said, 'Think we can catch the last rut out of here?'

* * *

The next time Sonny saw Jane she was wearing an outfit that he lacked the terminology to name or describe, but it included gloves, and some kind of netting over her hair. She was wearing high-heeled shoes again, too. But for that, she'd have been walking away from him too fast for him to catch up as they left the school building. But she listened to him apologize for giving her a hard time about Nathan. He even let the apology show on his face.

Jane put her hands on hips, gave him a hard stare, and said, 'Why do you always have to write people off before you even know them?'

Sonny's shoulders drooped and he tried to contain the defensiveness in his voice as he said, 'I've told you that before: because it saves time. Anyway, you don't usually complain about it.'

Jane softened. 'I guess it can be part of the unique Sonny Morgendorffer experience. And I suppose this retro thing can be silly. Look at me now, wearing a snood.'

Now Sonny knew which word to look up. It didn't sound as if there could be more than one spelling. He told Jane that he'd been pretending not to notice the snood. Jane said it was just for fun and Sonny told her (with lingering doubts about his own sincerity) that he'd finally figured that out.

'So', he said, feeling the atmosphere lighten, 'can I walk you to your steno pool?' This time Jane didn't take offense. At that moment, Nathan drove up to collect Jane, in his big old-fashioned car with fins exactly as advertised. Jane magnanimously offered Sonny a ride home too, and he hesitated only a moment before accepting.

Although he still couldn't find words for Jane's outfit, even he could see that Nathan's tie had been chosen to match it. He mentioned the observation as he slid into the car (a convertible, but with the top up), then figured he should say something more. 'Um … copacetic.'

'Hey', said Nathan, 'you speaketh the jive!'

'I dabble.'

As they drove off, Nathan did what presumably figured in his mind as returning the compliment (and full marks for intentions, maybe he did really have impeccable manners) by saying something about Sonny's 'look'. Sonny had spent years resolutely refusing to learn the lingo of the stylish and wasn't going to start now: the only part he understood was something about 'circa eighty-three', so he responded, 'Darn, I was going for circa eighty-two'. (He had meanwhile been appraising Nathan's own looks: he was big and well-built, well-groomed if you thought that kind of thing was important—Sonny could see all the visual appeal, for what it was worth.)

Jane changed the subject to invite Sonny and Tom to hang out with her and Nathan on Friday, 'checking out' a movie theatre outside town.

Why didn't she talk about the movie they'd be seeing instead of the theatre they'd be 'checking out'? What did that mean, anyway? Sonny was clearing his throat in readiness to respond to Jane's invitation as his mind kept ticking over. He'd been to places 'outside town' before now, not of his own will, they were the kind of places where bad things happened to people like him, where other people made bad things happen to people like him.

'Um …' he started …

The thing about taking a ride in Nathan's time machine, for people like himself—and Stacy—was that you never knew when the next offense would come. Had Jane told Nathan he was gay or did she tell him the truth?

'… I guess …' he temporised …

Jane had said, and he knew it was the truth, that she wasn't getting involved with any bigots. And Nathan was sitting right here while she extended the invitation and showing no strain. But how much did Nathan know? What had Jane said to him? 'My best friend Sonny is secretly straight but pretends to be gay'? Or what? And even if Nathan knew—well, did Jane __really__ know what Nathan was like? He couldn't deny what Stacy had said about Jane having the right to find out for herself and make her own decisions—but there were other ways to find out than alone with Nathan in a movie theatre conveniently 'outside town'. There had been another reason why Sonny noticed how big and well-built Nathan was. Some men in the post-war years had __ideas__ about how to impress women—come to that, __some__ men still did—of course, those ideas were errors if applied to Jane, but Sonny didn't look forward with pleasure to his own possible role in a scenario where Nathan learned this in practice.

But shouldn't he try listening to what Jane and Stacy had been trying to tell him? The trouble was, he couldn't make himself sound enthusiastic. He did his best.

'… say, can you tell me what movie we'll be seeing?'

Nathan said, 'No movie.'

'This place is abandoned', Jane said. 'In fact, apparently it's practically falling apart.'

'I see where that would be worth checking out', Sonny said. 'It sounds kind of cool. In fact, it sounds like just the kind of thing I like to do. Or maybe Tom.' Instead of using tone of voice to add emphasis, which would have called on talent he lacked, Sonny added words to the sentence hoping to underline the point for Jane. Sitting behind Jane he could see her head move in a way that suggested she recognized what he was doing.

"Tom never would have gone this far from his couch. I don't even know why I thought it was ok to ask you."

"Hey, I didn't say I wouldn't go." _Just wanted to point out that this is just a better dressed and maybe even weirder, if at all possible, version of..._

"You could invite Stacy too."

'You know, I've never been on a double-date before', Nathan didn't turn a hair during this conversation.

That might just have been the effect of his pomade.

At school it surprised Sonny that Stacy said she might be too busy. "Oh, Fashion Club. I keep forgetting you're in that."

"Um," She twirls a finger in her hair. "Not the Fashion Club. Some thing different. But, um, I'll see about it."

Sonny had to be happy with that. Just because _he_ didn't have an extracurricular activities didn't mean Stacy didn't.

He was, less than unhappy, maybe almost happy, when she showed up at his house that night.

On the ride out, Sonny returned to probing the subject on Friday evening as Nathan's car (top down now—it would have been nice to have been warned about the draft) took the four of them along the highway to 'outside town'. Besides, if he hadn't done that, the conversation would have revolved __entirely__ around Nathan's wardrobe. His hat was custom-made (which was why it fit so well that it didn't blow off—and Jane wore a headscarf, so __some__ people had warning and preparation) and he owned a pair of pants that once belonged to Sammy Davis, Jr. So as well as dropping hints about how the post-war era had not been a comfortable one for every one, Sonny threw in some comments about segregation, McCarthyism, and stifling conformism generally. Nathan didn't attempt to dispute with him about those things, he just didn't see why they should affect his attachment to the standards of style and decorum that he admired. By the time they reached their destination, Sonny was reasonably secure that Nathan's ideas about an evening spent in post-war style would not extend to a little impromptu weirdo bashing. Even if Sonny was his usual uncharming self.

The abandoned theatre was a drive-in, not a building, and as run-down as anybody could have wished: screen peeling away in large sections, fence way too dilapidated for the Tom Sawyer treatment to save it, some playground equipment near disintegration from rust. Jane, Stacy, and Sonny were all still making appreciative remarks and/or noises when Nathan said, 'Darn. We're the first ones here. I wanted to make an entrance.'

Sonny echoed interrogatively Nathan's remark about 'first ones here', but he knew what it implied. He switched back at once from 'warily accepting' to 'warily alert'. There must be more people coming. Yes, here they were, and Nathan was eagerly vocal in reaction. Their cars and, when they got out, their clothes were of the same vintage as Nathan's. Nathan, inviting Jane to be introduced to them, referred to them as 'the gang', a term which did nothing to reassure Sonny. As Nathan paused to look in the rear-vision mirror and run a comb through his hair, Sonny was already reflexively turning his eye to possible escape routes. An open space was good, but if he got clear he'd be stranded in the boondocks without transport.

Stacy didn't seem too upset by it. She had dressed fashionably for today, not the forties, but was loving the styles she saw and made comments about maybe trying it. Some day. After graduation when the Fashion Club wouldn't matter.

Meanwhile, outside the car some of the 'gang' had put music on and started practicing complicated dance moves. Stacy was commenting on their skill, while Nathan and Jane were getting out of the car.

'Aren't you guys coming?' said Jane, turning to look at Sonny and Stacy. 'Wait a minute, Sonny Morgendorffer, I know what that look on your face means.'

Sonny returned her gaze with equal steadiness. 'Then you know it's nothing I'm going to allow to disrupt my purposes, and I'm not going to allow it to disrupt yours either.'

'Nathan …'

'Yeah, I know, you told me, Nathan's a class act. But you don't know any more about his "gang" than I do. The old post-war witch-hunt spirit may not be dead for everybody.'

Jane turned her head to Nathan, who was waiting courteously for her. 'Nathan', she said carefully, 'if Sonny and Tom prefer to sit in the car, that's going to be cool with everybody, isn't it?'

'If that's what they want.' Nathan shrugged. 'Hey, they're with Nathan. You can't be more in than that! Now let's cut a rug, sweetheart!'

Jane flicked one quick glance from Sonny to Tom and back, then turned to join Nathan. Sonny felt Stacy's hand on his shoulder and turned to face her.

'There was more going on there than met the eye', Stacy said. She looked more closely at Sonny's face. 'Now I think __I__ know what that look on your face means, too. This place brings back some … unpleasant memories?'

Sonny and Stacy had talked about Sonny's painful past experiences. They'd talked about them as much as Sonny wanted to. So he answered Stacy by saying, 'I'm not old enough to have memories of the post-war years. But I've heard how the House Un American Activities Committee used to feel about people like me, and who knows whether some of the people here might not share some of that inspiration? Weirdos who refused to conform...'

'So when you were looking all around before, you were checking for exits?'

Sonny nodded. 'That was just reflex, though. Now that we're actually here as part of their little get-together, running for it would be bad as tactics and bad in spirit. If anything's coming, I'll have to take it, and probably nothing is anyway. I've just got used to living my life a certain way.'

'I remember you telling me that includes reasonable precautions.' Stacy started fiddling around and after a minute or two she had the top up and securely fastened. Then he made sure all the doors were locked. 'That should be enough to keep us safe', she said.

'Good thinking', Sonny said. He leaned over and gave Stacy a rare kiss on the lips.

'I hope Jane and Nathan don't mind we aren't out there. I mean, like, I like being back here with you but it is like, rude. I guess.'

"I would rather be in the back seat of this car with you than out there where I might say some thing that gets me beat up."

"If they didn't show up would you still rather be back here with me?"

"I, yes. I don't know if you're up on your shots." She gives him a quizzical look. "Tetanus shot, for all the rusted metal out there."

"Oh, yeah, I don't know either. I don't like needles."

"So no worry about heroine or steroids." Stacy gave off a light giggle.

The two continue to talk in the back seat while Jane enjoyed her time with Nathan's gang.

* * *

Normally Sonny wouldn't have paid any attention to a hairdo, but in this instance the retro creation on Jane's head was one of the stupidest things he had ever seen in his life. The rest of her outfit was just no worse than any of the others.

He didn't, of course, say this as they walked the school hallway. He let her talk about how everybody seemed to have enjoyed Friday night's 'double date' (she emphasized the phrase with malice aforethought, which was fine with Sonny).

'We were in the back seat at a drive-in', Sonny said. 'We were supposed to get into the 1950s spirit. And now I suppose you want to have your girlish curiosity satisfied about whether your best friend and your best friend's girlfriend are going "all the way". No', he continued even more flatly, 'not even close. Also, credit where credit's due, Nathan was a perfect gentleman about everything.'

Their conversation was interrupted as they reached the principal's office, outside which Ms Li was sitting at a table with a roll of tickets and a cashbox. Upchuck was standing by the table, dressed for the stage in a powder-blue dinner jacket, and spruiking.

'Come see a feat of legerdemain so dangerous that I've taken out an insurance policy on my body, and my bodily fluids. This Saturday night, I will be handcuffed, strait-jacketed, and interred within an airtight, steel-reinforced, military-grade trunk. Then, it's either escape, or asphyxiate.'

'Do we get to pick?' Sonny said, but Upchuck wasn't biting. He and Li were both behaving as if it were a serious proposition, with the proceeds apparently to be divided between what the principal was calling a 'special expenditures fund for embedding microchips in the gym equipment' and (judging by a discreet cough from Upchuck to remind her of a detail she was overlooking) the performer himself.

Sonny looked at Jane. 'Upchuck, bound and gagged', he said. 'That does sound entertaining.'

Jane bought four tickets for another double date.

* * *

'Welcome one and all! I'd like to thank Mr Ruttheimer for supporting a most worthy cause, and for giving me some pointers for adapting the intercom system for post-hypnotic suggestions!' Ms Li leaned towards the microphone and spoke in what she might possibly have intended to be subliminal tones. 'I will tithe my earnings to Lawndale High, tithe my earnings to Lawndale High.' Sonny plunged into reflection as she returned to her more usually abnormal tones to introduce the performers, Upchuck and his 'lovely assistant...

"Stacy?" He thought she had been running late. Like Jane and Nathan were. Thinking about Li's financial (mis)management was better than letting his eyes take in too much of 'Ruttheimer the Prestidigitator', his powder-blue outfit only less garish now by comparison with Stacy's 'magician's assistant' rig, all sequins and bare legs and ersatz glamour.

Subliminal post-hypnotic suggestions? She'd be absolutely at the bottom of the barrel after her little conspiracy with Leonard Lamm to suck in soda company money had been scotched at birth. And now she had the increased salaries to pay after the teachers' successful strike. She must be desperate to find some way of solving the school's budgetary 'crisis'—short of abandoning things like microchips for the gym equipment and bulletproof skylights, of course …

Sonny let more of his attention back to the stage now that there was less of Upchuck to see. Muttering nervously throughout about whether she was doing things right, Stacy had helped the 'magician' into a putative strait-jacket and ostensibly fastened him in chains. Now he was lying down in a large allegedly steel-reinforced trunk so that she could purportedly padlock it shut.

No sooner had she done so than she whispered, just loudly enough to project all over the auditorium, 'Oh no! What do I do next?' A muffled noise which could conceivably have been Upchuck's voice came from the trunk. Stacy smiled nervously at the crowd.

Sonny looked around to see how the crowd was 'enjoying the show'. and two unexplainedly empty seats. Sonny wondered, 'Where are Jane and Nathan?'

As the noise which was presumably supposed to indicate Upchuck's continued struggles kept emanating from the trunk, Li stepped forward again to say, 'What's taking so long? I rented the auditorium out, and the single Scientologists will be here in less than an hour.'

Stacy was reacting the way she reacted to most stimuli, namely, with acute anxiety bordering on hysteria. 'He was supposed to signal me! Something's wrong!'

'Panic! Panic!' shouted Li, suiting words to action. 'I foresee a massive hike in insurance premiums!'

Mr Taylor emerged from the wings and went straight up to her. 'Principal Li', he said, 'as I mentioned, I had certain experience at my last school with certain incidents where …'—and then he interrupted himself to beckon at somebody offstage, before turning back to Li and putting one hand on her shoulder as he started whispering in her ear. After another moment DeMartino appeared in response to Taylor's gesture, carrying a crowbar.

'Why do I __always__ wind up __bail__ ing out the naïve or in _ _com__ petent when their __ill-conceived__ plans go awry!' he bellowed with characteristic unevenness as he attacked the padlock with great vigour but little sign of skill.

Onepu rushed up on the stage from the audience. 'Oh, please, An—Mr DeMartino, one of our precious students is in that trunk! Oh, do be careful!' She flapped over to Li. 'We have to do something at once, but we must not be recklessly precipitate! We must be so careful of the welfare of the children!'

'The welfare of Lawndale High!' shouted Li.

Taylor had crossed back to the trunk to observe DeMartino's activity. 'I doubt that crowbar is going to be sufficient for the task', he said dispassionately.

Li rushed offstage as DeMartino continued his struggles and Onepu her panic. Only Taylor seemed to be taking events in his stride. Stacy had cleared out of the way, leaving the stage, and was now standing in the aisle, near the seats of the rest of the Fashion Club, weeping furiously in a state of total nervous collapse.

Jane continued to miss everything as Li returned brandishing a fire-axe. She rushed at the trunk, trying to swing at it, but having difficulty as Onepu tried to shield it, shouting, 'Principal! Principal Li! Please!'

Li, meanwhile was shouting incoherently, though a few words were distinguishable: 'Lawsuit!' 'Liability!' 'Bankruptcy!'

Sonny kept turning his head from the stage towards the entrance to see whether Jane might yet be in time for the climax, which promised to be much more richly entertaining than he had dared to hope, but still nothing. He looked back to the stage, and then back to the entrance. Stacy was still standing in the aisle distraught. The rest of the Fashion Club were loudly commiserating with her about her public embarrassment. At least, as far as Sonny could tell, Tiffany and Quinn were sincerely appalled, but the job Sandi was doing of concealing her secret satisfaction at the spectacle could have fooled only Tiffany and Quinn. 'Good thing Upchuck's buried alive in there', she said, 'so you won't have to spend the rest of your life seeking revenge for the way he's humiliated you in front of the whole school.'

Without a quiver, Stacy stopped sobbing and dropped her hands from her face. 'Oh, Sandi', she said, in a voice Sonny had never heard her use before, 'you are so naïve.'

At that moment, whether assisted by Li's wild blows with the fire-axe or not, DeMartino finally succeeded in raising the lid of the trunk. Taylor looked into it.

'Empty', he said.

' _ _Empty?__ ' echoed Onepu, __literally wringing her hands__.

DeMartino turned and pointed to the powder-blue vision at the rear of the auditorium. 'He's back there!'

'Shazam!' said Upchuck, right on cue.

Li was staring at him, bewildered, swaying wildly from one foot to the other. Then, with a wordless cry, she rushed forward, still waving the fire-axe in a circle above her head.

What her intentions were, nobody ever knew—or if her psychiatrists figured them out later, they were shielded by professional confidence. Halfway down the stairs from the stage, still ululating, she missed a step and fell headlong, the axe clattering harmlessly to the floor.

* * *

Jane missed out on another nail being hammered into the Fashion Club's coffin (Quinn and Tiffany were deeply impressed by Stacy's performance and hoped she could teach them the useful art of crying, and Sandi said … __nothing__ ). But Jane did arrive in time for the final scene of the drama, Li strapped to a gurney, conscious again and raving, and being loaded into an ambulance by psychiatric orderlies. Taylor had smoothly taken charge of the situation and was welcoming the single Scientologists as Jane walked up to Sonny and Stacy, still clad in her assistant costume, to be filled in on what she'd missed ('It wasn't all good: Upchuck survived'). She came alone, and when Stacy asked after Nathan she said simply that they'd broken up. Sonny had already figured that out: she was dressed in running shorts, boots, and a scarlet jacket over a T-shirt. Now that Jane was ready to admit that Nathan was a jerk, Sonny could confess his own feelings candidly.

'Maybe I did all that goofy stuff because I was a little too eager to be hanging out with a cool guy', said Jane.

Now that she'd made a frank admission, Sonny felt he should reciprocate. 'No. You were right about fun being fun. I'm gonna try and remember that on the off-chance that I allow myself to have some.'

'I guess Nathan's stylish good looks blinded me to the profound jerkiness underneath.'

Sonny said, 'You always did have a weakness for the weird ones', .

With things more comfortable between them again, Sonny later heard more from Jane about the circumstances of her break-up with Nathan. On the fateful evening he'd arrived to pick her up and take her to a tiki bar. She'd been a little put out when she'd reminded him of the agreed plan to go first to the magic show and he'd wanted to blow that off. Then he'd told her that he didn't think she was ready to mix eras by wearing 1940s shoes with a 1950s dress. She'd tried to get him to lighten up by saying that __he__ was wearing a 1940s zoot suit (yes, he really did own one after all—'for special occasions') to a 1960s tiki bar, but instead of lightening up he'd been horrified to the point of going home to change. So she'd told him straight out that he was taking something they were doing for fun and being too serious about it. He'd started ranting about 'pride' and 'standards' and 'true believers', they'd had a brief stand-up shouting match, she'd told him to leave, and he'd left. Once she'd realised that they weren't doing the retro thing for fun (or at least that Nathan wasn't), she'd seen no reason to keep doing the retro thing at all. Or the Nathan thing. She didn't seem too broken up about it, so it couldn't ever have been serious.

A few other things also came out into the light of day over the course of that fortnight. A few members of the school board had been in Upchuck's audience and impressed by Taylor's performance in a crisis. It turned out that he'd had more experience as an assistant principal at his old school than Lawndale High's current assistant principal, who'd only been in the job a few years and also only had a few years to go before retirement (it figured that Li would want somebody in that position who was just looking for an opportunity to coast for the remainder of a career and wouldn't make any waves). So the school board appointed Taylor acting principal during Li's temporary absence at the funny farm.

Once Taylor was (even temporarily) in charge, some other things came to light. The pay rise the teachers' union had won had exacerbated what everybody knew had already been the school's budgetary problems, which helped to explain why Li had been so worked up about financial issues on the night she cracked. The money she'd been getting from things like renting out the auditorium to single Scientologists had helped a little, but it wasn't anything like what Leonard Lamm had led her to hope she might raise from a soda company. Then there was the little matter of the cryptically named 'liaison fees' she'd secured for Lawndale High from Grove Hills for unspecified services which had somehow come to an end the previous year. But Taylor had been able to make an impressive presentation to the school board, to the PTA, and to a hastily called school review meeting (clashing with no football games). If the school sold off the satellite scanner, the polygraph machine, the security cameras, and all Li's other favorite gear, and more importantly dispensed with the recurrent expenditure on bomb-sniffing dogs and 'miscellaneous security services', it could easily afford the teachers' pay rise __and__ reverse all the other cuts to actual educational activities.

Sonny couldn't even claim to be any more unsurprised than anybody else when it was announced that Ms Li was taking early retirement 'for medical reasons' and that Mr Taylor would be the new principal of Lawndale High.

He was surprised when Stacy pulled him out of the hallway and in to the empty auditorium between classes. "Um, Sonny, uh,"

"What?" Sonny recognized the look on her face and the way she fidgeted with her hair. "What's wrong?"

"You're not mad about the UpChuck thing, are you?"

Now Sonny was surprised even more. "Why would I?"

"I, well, I hung out with him, and stuff."

"And?" She doesn't respond. "I hang out with Jane all the time. We're just friends. You can be friends with UpChuck if you want."

"Ew, no." Sonny almost, almost, smiled at her response. "I just wanted to learn how he did some of his tricks. I know it is like, nerdy, but I think magic stuff is interesting."

"Ok then. I never thought to be mad or jealous." _Not like how I felt jealous about Jane hanging out with Nathan... Not going there._ "We, hang out, date, but you're still free to be friends with any one you want."

"Ok!" Stacy hugged him before kissing him on the lips. They continued far longer than ever before when the bell rang. "Oh no! I'm going to be late!"

Sonny didn't mind. He was already more advanced than any one else in the science class and could be late with out missing any thing important.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Life In The Past Lane' by Anne D Bernstein**_**


	13. Chapter 13

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 _ _ **63\. End Of A Feud**__

'Sandi, I had another idea, but … you're President of the Fashion Club and I need to you to tell me whether it's a good idea or a bad one.'

'Well, go ahead, Quinn.'

Sandi's voice had only its normal 'hoity-toity' tone, not the extra 'hoity-toity' one that meant she was ready to rubbish whatever Quinn said automatically, or try to use it to score a point against Quinn somehow. Quinn was encouraged.

'I was thinking, seeing as so far the ideas we had inside the Club don't seem to have worked out, maybe we could ask somebody outside the Club who's good at dealing with bummed-out stuff.' Quinn deliberately didn't mention anybody specifically.

'Hmm …', went Sandi, as if she were thinking about Quinn's suggestion. 'There's that boy who turned out to be your __brother__ , Quinn, he's supposed to be good with bummed-out stuff. But he's not really interested in female things, is he?'

Stacy gave out a quiet "But he.."

Quinn bristled. 'If your attitude is that he's not the right sort of person …', she began, but Sandi interrupted in a hurry.

'Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions, __Kuh-winn__. It was my suggestion, if you recall, that your brother might have qualities to help in this situation, but as __President__ of the Fashion Club, I have to consider the most __suitable__ way of approaching an outsider.'

'Well, sometimes you can get Sonny to do things by paying him money—if you think that would be suitable, of course, Sandi.'

'In view of the serious nature of this crisis, I could call an emergency meeting and suggest spending from the Club treasury.'

Quinn squeezed her hands together. 'That is such a good idea, Sandi!'

'Now, as President I delegate you to speak with your brother. Depending on your report, I will decide whether to negotiate with him officially.'

"I, he might not take my word. Maybe his girl, um, his friend should?" Quinn looks over at Stacy.

"I could. He is my Gay BFF afterall."

Sandi narrows her eyes. "As trendy as it is, I think you should have found some one else."

Stacy fidgets with her scrunchie. "But, like, have you found a Gay BFF?"

Sandi replies after a sigh that was between exasperated and annoyed. "There are so few to choose from in Lawndale."

Stacy and Quinn share a look before leaving for Quinn's house.

* * *

Sonny had been struck by the way Quinn was worked up about her little 'crisis' in the Fashion Club. Perhaps she was more worried about problems there than she would otherwise have been because of the drama going on at their own house. Of course, he could use a little distraction from that himself. And he was being offered money. He'd made it a condition of giving his help, though, that he didn't have to speak to the whole Fashion Club together. Interviewing the members separately was probably better technique anyway, but he didn't think he could have stomached dealing with them all at once regardless of recommended procedure.

Now he was going over his interview notes. The problem began with Stacy and Tiffany buying identical dresses. Sandi said it would give powerful ammunition to the Club's 'enemies' if two of its members were seen wearing the same dress. (Sonny couldn't see this. If he'd been writing a list of their 'enemies', he would have put himself near the top, and he couldn't see how he could use this so-called 'ammunition', but never mind.) According to Sandi, it would (mysteriously) be even worse if they wore their dresses at different times and these unspecified 'enemies' started spreading a rumour that there was actually only one of the dresses and they were sharing it. They couldn't return the dresses to the shop where they'd bought them, the two-week grace period having elapsed. Sandi had come up with the ingenious idea of settling the matter with a debate, but Tiffany had not properly grasped the concept. She'd got as far as stating a conclusion, that she should have the dress, but had not understood what it meant to advance a supporting argument. Stacy's elaborate speech was for nothing as Tiffany couldn't grasp the majority of what was said. Sandi and Quinn had had some strange compunction about ruling her the loser by default.

The solution was simple and Sonny started on his report at once—he had arranged to provide it in writing so he wouldn't have to speak to any of them again. If only one out of Stacy and Tiffany could have the dress, one of them needed to buy the other's. A sealed-bid auction could determine which one would pay, and the price. This way no one could accuse him of bias for Stacy because of their friendship. It was so easy to explain that Sonny padded out the report with some lagniappe, suggesting options for the high bidder: keep the second dress in storage as a replacement for when the first wore out; give it as a present to a relative or friend living somewhere else; sell it to a second-hand shop in a remote location to recoup some money; use the material to make something else (Fashion Club members were bound to have better ideas than Sonny did about matching accessories for which it would be suitable).

He wished the problems at home could be solved as easily.

His cousin Erin was getting a divorce from her husband Brian; his aunt Rita, with the assistance of her mother, Sonny's grandmother, had guilted Sonny's mother into handling the legal aspects of the divorce; Erin had been supposed to come to stay with them to discuss the matter, while Rita went to New York with her latest beau, an actor called Ralph; Erin hadn't shown up because her grandmother had sent her to a Swiss spa for a week to calm her nerves; but Rita had come to stay in Erin's place because Ralph had broken up with her, when she'd already arranged to have her house painted during her planned trip away. When Sonny had told Jane about how his family was suffering for his mother's family's crap, she'd mentioned that he didn't even seem to be looking forward to his ringside seat at Erin's gut-wrenching break-up and he'd said, 'I know. It's like I've forgotten how to have fun.'

His mother's grievances against his aunt were not new to Sonny. He'd heard them endlessly rehearsed, and he knew from his aunt Amy that they went back to childhood. Attention and money had been lavished on Rita (and her daughter, Erin) that Helen (and her children) never got, without Rita ever putting in any effort of her own: she'd never held down a job and had married or otherwise paired up with one man after another, none of them worthwhile. Those were Helen's grievances. On the other side, Sonny gathered that Rita resented what she regarded as the chip on Helen's shoulder and as the compulsive over-achieving that made other people look bad. Rita thought that Helen would __get__ more attention from her mother (and other family members) if she __gave__ more attention. She'd seen it as an example when Helen had tried to suggest that, not being a specialist in divorce law, she might not be the best person to handle Erin's case. Sonny's knowledge of the legal profession told him that from an objective point of view his mother was exactly right: Erin would be better off with a lawyer who was more junior but had extensive specific relevant experience. Obviously his aunt Rita did not share that knowledge and could only react to Helen's reference to somebody 'junior' as her sister attempting to dodge family responsibility and palm her off.

The Morgendorffer house had become the venue for all this to be relentlessly ground down by the two sisters' metaphorical molars to a slurry from which all flavour had been drained. Quinn, desperate, had been trying to bond with Sonny, and to get him to join her in maintaining the family peace, and the situation also probably had something to do with her overreaction to the little Fashion Club 'drama'. At least that had provided Sonny with a brief if stupid distraction. In the meantime, his mother and his aunt had boxed the compass of their disagreements until Quinn relayed a telephone message from Erin about a previously undisclosed pre-nuptial agreement which guaranteed a fifty-fifty split. This complication had suggested once again to Sonny's mother that a more experienced lawyer should deal with the case, but Rita's reaction was the same as before and they were off round the circle again, making Quinn even more eager than before to have Sonny collaborate with her in the hope that he could solve this situation for her the way he'd solved the one with the Fashion Club. She'd even cancelled her dates to stay home with him, and the only thing that made that seem less dramatic than it should have was the way everybody else in the family was acting. Their father already bore the scars of the recurring conflict between his wife and her older sister. Even before the change of plan which brought Rita to their house, when it was only Erin who was expected to be physically present, he'd felt the need to mix up a whole pitcher of martinis as a precaution, and when his sister-in-law came through the door he'd started drinking directly from it. Now things had reached the point where he had literally fled his own house, not planning to be present again until Rita had left.

With his mother and his aunt on the brink of mutually assured destruction, his sister clearly having a nervous breakdown, and his father on the lam, Sonny did not have time to chat or hang out with Stacy, and Stacy didn't quite seem to grasp this. She'd make an attempt at contact, meekly abandon it—and then call up, or round, again and again. His family, Sonny had to deal with; Stacy, he didn't.

Strictly speaking, the situation between his mother and his aunt was not his to __deal__ with. If he tried a manipulative maneuver, the odds were he'd find himself out of his depth. What he was going to do was the kind of dealing that his father and his sister weren't managing, just weathering the storm.

The storm winds were swirling yet again, as they would keep doing until Rita left. Mothering was the most prominent theme at the moment. Sonny's mother was still angry about his grandmother's approach, blatantly favoring Rita, lavishing money on her and Erin and leaving little or nothing for anybody else (the expenditure on Rita's __first__ wedding had left Sonny's parents having to pay for their own wedding and barely able to afford a honeymoon). Rita made a great deal of her own maternal work raising Erin, and implicitly and explicitly contrasted herself with Helen, obsessing about work at the expense of her family. Sonny was by now so familiar with the twisted logic that he didn't need to eavesdrop on more than one word in five to know where the argument was up to: even without listening at all he could have recited the totality of the debate in his sleep. The only thing that was worrying him slightly was that if Rita's visit lasted much longer he might actually start doing that, literally, and even that wouldn't be a major problem because nobody else would pay attention.

Sonny and Quinn were in the living room, with the sounds of their mother and their aunt leaking in from the kitchen, when the phone rang. Quinn, sitting next to it, picked it up. She was thrilled when it turned out to be Erin, ringing to announce that the divorce was off. She couldn't wait to take the news to the two sisters in the kitchen, as if it would help the situation. Sonny knew better, but he also knew that this was a lesson Quinn could only learn from her own experience. He trailed behind her to hear her explain that Brian had flown to Switzerland and reconciled with Erin and that they were now having a second honeymoon. He was curious to see exactly how this would become more fuel for the fire. Theoretically it should be good news for everybody, but he knew that wouldn't be how things would play out. How would they play out?

Answer: his mother would jump past the bit about how she was now freed from responsibility for practicing divorce law to the immediate inference that any second honeymoon would be another contribution from her own mother's credit card to the only branch of the extended Barksdale family it ever helped out. And the two Barksdale sisters present were off again: round seventy-seven, or whatever it was.

The doorbell ringing at that moment, Sonny took responsibility for going to answer it, allowing Quinn to remain behind and continue her education. Again it was Stacy, still with nothing better to say than 'Hey, how's it going?'

Registering in his full consciousness only one word in five was still enough to tell Sonny how it was going. 'Oh, just fine', he said. If Stacy wanted to turn his attention to constructing his own full mental transcription, that was his business.

Behind Sonny, Quinn, more educated than she could bear (she never had liked being educated), came rushing out of the kitchen, through the living room, and then up the stairs, crying as she did so, 'Oh, when will it stop? When? WHEN?'

Sonny was just about to suggest to Stacy that they step away from the crossfire, when the subsection of his awareness still focused in the appropriate direction picked up that his aunt Rita had formulated a novel attack on her sister's parenting and defense of her own. What pinned his attention and fixed the words in his mind was the silence that followed them. His mother was never silent like that, certainly not in response to Rita. That was more like one of his own responses. Rita's not breaking the silence told him something about his mother's body language, and kept his attention held.

Then his mother did speak, in a voice he'd never heard her use before. It wasn't an angry voice (he'd heard all her angry voices before, with Rita, with his father, with himself and Quinn, with her work). It was a deadpan voice, a voice without intonation, inflection, or modulation of any kind, a voice without affect. It must be __his__ mother, because it was his own voice.

Stacy picked up on that too. 'I never knew your mother could sound just like you', she said.

Looking at her, Sonny figured she too had picked up the words of that last exchange, but wasn't saying anything about them. Those words made Sonny think again of weathering the storm. Still looking at Stacy, he asked himself how you weather a storm, and answered himself that one way was to look for something that offered shelter.

'If I haven't permanently antagonized you by rebuffing your attempts to be supportive over the last week', he said, 'would you like to go for a walk?'

When Stacy just nodded, Sonny came out, shutting the door behind him. 'I've never told you about what used to go on between my mother and my aunt Rita', he said. 'And since you were just present at the moment when it changed from "what goes on" to "what used to go on", you might as well hear the story.'

At a leisurely pace, one stroll around the block was long enough for Sonny to tell Stacy the whole story of the Barksdale sisters, not just Rita and Helen but Amy as a bonus—even the parts he had heard about but not seen, like Rita and Helen getting maudlin drunk together after their fight at Erin's wedding reception, and saying how much they loved each other. All the repetition made the story easy to summarize. Stacy said, 'Wow. Growing up in a repressed household is so boring next to this stuff. We always have to pretend problems don't exist. Gets pretty inconvenient when there are odors involved.'

'Well, whatever a family's pattern, it's good to have support from outside it. If you've got sense enough to let yourself accept it.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Human relationships, huh? Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Like Erin and Brian, perhaps. My non-existent-in-the-first-place optimism wasn't exactly nurtured by my twenty-four-year-old cousin's trip to the brink of divorce.'

'I can see how that might affect you.'

'I suppose if we do get married at least we...' Both become silent as the _M_ word settled between them.

After a minute of silence, Stacy spoke up. "I, I know like, to protect my popularity, we said you were gay. But like, why does your aunt think that? She doesn't go to Lawndale."

It was the only reference that either of them made, even indirectly, to the words of the final exchange between Sonny's mother and his aunt.

What Rita had said was: 'At least I brought up a normal child, one who __could__ get married.'

And Helen's response had been: 'Will you need any help packing, Rita, or can you manage that by yourself?'

"I don't know. My parents know the truth. Quinn knows the truth. Why didn't she tell my aunt?"

Sonny and Stacy were now back in front of the Morgendorffer house. They stopped walking and Stacy said, 'So, want to go see a movie?'

'I really should. I mean, I'd really like to. And I will if you can see your way to giving me a rain-check. But Aunt Rita's car's gone, and I ought to go inside and check on what's left of my family. Speaking of which, Dad left me in charge of the coded message to tell him whether it's safe to come back, and he might have called while I was out. Can I see you soon?'

'Sure.' Stacy put a hand on Sonny's shoulder and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Then he turned and started to walk away, looking back over his shoulder after a few steps to give a farewell wave. Sonny waved back and then turned himself to go into the house.

He found his mother and his sister in the kitchen, in the calm after the storm, cutting up a package of pre-prepared cookie dough into slices ready for baking.

'Hey, Sonny', Quinn said, 'Dad rang while you were out. He wanted to talk to you about some birds or whatever.'

'That was a code', Sonny said, and then, as his mother nodded knowingly, 'I don't know why he thought we needed to have a code.'

'Yeah', Quinn said, 'I just told him Aunt Rita was leaving.'

Their mother nodded again. 'And then I took the phone and told him what happened, and asked him to come home as soon as he can.'

Sonny watched silently for a minute or two as the cookie preparation continued. Then he said, 'I look forward to eating some of those cookies.'

'Not for me', Quinn said. 'But I tell you what. __Gone With The Wind__ is on television tonight. It's got that Civil War you and Dad are always talking about, plus this really big fire. I thought we could all watch it together, with cookies for whoever wants cookies and celery sticks for whoever wants celery sticks. But you don't have to decide now.'

'I might just head up to my room for a little while, then.'

In his room, Sonny couldn't decide whether he wanted to talk or not to talk. He settled on email, and sat down at his computer to write to Luhrman, who was in his mind because of the memories of Erin's wedding.

Then he went back downstairs to have dinner with his family (his father having returned), and to watch __Gone With The Wind__. Quinn was in tears at how sad it was, and it made Sonny feel like crying as well. But the cookies tasted good. He thanked his mother and his sister for them, and went to bed feeling very strange.

He felt more nearly normal in the morning. When he logged on to the computer to see whether there was a reply from Luhrman, and thinking also of possibly dropping a quick line to Stacy and maybe even one to Jane while he was at it, he was surprised by an email from his Aunt Amy. It said that she would have called, but she couldn't be sure who'd answer the phone, and she particularly wanted to speak to him first, and could he call her?

When he did so, she explained that she'd been prompted by hearing from her mother, who'd passed on Rita's version of recent events. 'I know this is strange', she said, 'but I wanted to speak to you to pass on a message to Helen for me. My sisters have been fighting with each other all my life, and I think even before that, and now that's over there's something I want you to tell your mother from me.'

'Okay', Sonny said.

After he got off the phone, though, he decided he wanted to speak to __his__ sister first and then to his mother afterwards. He found Quinn and told her about Amy's call.

'She said to tell Mom that no matter what happened she'd still always have one sister to fight with. And I was thinking about that, and about how I've been really strange around Stacy this week because of all the stuff that's been going on around here, and about how maybe you were having a similarly unanticipated reaction, wanting to spend time with me? So I thought before I tell Mom what Amy said, I'd just tell you that no matter what happens, you'll always have a brother to fight with.'

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Aunt Nauseam' by Jacquelyn Reingold**_**


	14. Chapter 14

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 _ _ **64\. Where You Might Not Expect It**__

When Sonny had finished elementary school, he'd thought that middle school couldn't be any worse.

On his first day at middle school, with great symbolic aptness, some of the eighth-graders had left a half-brick hidden under a ratty old cap where he was sure to walk past. He'd seen them laughing after he'd tried to kick the cap out of the way.

No matter how bad things were there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't keep getting worse and worse.

He'd probably had that lesson repeated for him an average of once a year all his life. When he'd started at pre-school he'd thought nothing could be worse than having to spend his days in a house with Quinn.

So why should he expect getting into college to change the pattern?

But wouldn't it be great if it did?

If he chose the right college … if it made any difference which college he chose … people seemed to believe it did … that just meant life was setting him up so that when he got to college and his life got worse it would be his own fault for choosing the wrong one … or, just as bad, life was positioning him for the biggest disappointment yet when he didn't get into the college he'd set his heart on … at least that couldn't happen if he didn't set his heart on his choice of college, or on college at all … but if he didn't get into the college he wanted, or any college, there'd still be something else, and there was no reason why __that__ shouldn't be worse ….

He hated this.

An exquisitely artistic detail embellishing the workmanship of the implement with which he was now being tormented was the scholarship question. A dedicated school career of avoiding extracurricular activities should have established his credentials as somebody lacking the well-rounded motivation and involvement in balanced interests that qualified you for most scholarships. Except that, as his mother incisively pointed out, there were scholarships purely for academic achievement. He couldn't honestly tell her that he wasn't expecting to go to college. He couldn't tell her that he didn't want a choice of where he went; he couldn't bear to tell her that he __did__. So he retreated into silence, suffering with the knowledge of how poor a defense it was in this circumstance. He had no winning cards left when she laid down her top trumps.

'Then promise me', she said, 'you will at least look into some kind of prize or scholarship. Okay? Not for me, not for your father, for you.'

He sighed and conceded the game.

* * *

Sonny spent an unpleasant night surfing the Web and reading about scholarships for concert violinists, nationally ranked gymnasts, and published authors (despite what Tom had told him, having an 'encouraging' rejection letter wouldn't come close to scoring the points he needed). The nearest he got to a possibility was a ten-thousand-dollar prize from the Wizard Foundation if you could somehow con them into believing that you embodied the 'Wizard pursuit of excellence'. To apply, though, you had to write an essay about how you'd change the world if you could. Jane helpfully offered to paint mushroom clouds if he needed any illustrations.

It helped to have Jane as a touchstone in a world with Jodie Landon in it. After nearly three years of experience, Jodie was still asking Sonny to take on an extracurricular activity. This time it was filling a vacancy caused by the resignation of one of the editors of the school newspaper. After he had provided her with the needless confirmation that he had not suddenly changed into a completely different person with an interest in extracurricular activities, she asked him what he was going to do about college applications, which led him on to tell her about his exchanges with his mother and about the Wizard Foundation Prize. She wished him luck with it.

'If I actually follow through', he said. 'But I'm hoping to come to my senses before that happens.'

* * *

He wasn't sure whether it counted as 'coming to his senses' or not, but he came up with a way of writing an essay for the Wizard Foundation that he was able to square with his conscience. When he'd finished it, he read it to Jane.

'In sum', he concluded, 'my world would be made happier by the simple step of eliminating sexual taboos of all kinds. People with unusual tastes could satisfy them, and be happy without suffering from social pressures against them. Public figures would not have to lie and hide their private lives but could be judged only on how they really benefited people. And, of course, promising young students, such as myself, wouldn't have to spend their time grovelling in scholarship essays, because they wouldn't have to compete with people who were only interested in higher education as an avenue to sexual opportunities.'

"What?"

Sonny sighed and tried again. "Since every one at school thinks I'm gay except for a select few, I've noticed how I am treated. Not actually being gay doesn't matter. If I were or weren't, there are still some things that I've noticed, that shouldn't happen to anyone. Just because they are gay or like leather or any other thing that isn't considered normal they feel they must hide their true selves. If we could eliminate these discriminations against those who don't line up with said..." He noticed the glassy eyed look of Jane.

He didn't get quite the reception from Jane he'd hoped for. Of course he didn't want her to be enthusiastic. He wanted her to call it the way she saw it. But she seemed __too__ ready to explain to him how the system worked. He'd written the essay with sincerity, as much as that was within his repertoire, but Jane seemed to think that was quixotic and naive (she pretended to look around for his 'born yesterday' umbilical cord). They didn't get any deeper into the discussion because they were interrupted first by his mother and then by his father. It was a bad day when having his family interrupt a conversation with Jane was a good thing.

Divergent as his essay had been from what Jane (and, to be honest, he himself) had expected the Wizard Foundation to want, it wasn't divergent enough to stop them from selecting him as a finalist although, so as to keep him from feeling too flattered, he was only a dime-a-dozen one of a hundred finalists.

The next blow, just to make things worse, he could only blame himself for. He'd done a bad day's work for himself when he told Jodie Landon about the scholarship, because she'd gone and applied for it too. Naturally __she__ had got into the finals. So too had Upchuck, but for that circumstance Sonny could place all the blame on the general malignancy of life. He himself was not even indirectly to blame, because Upchuck had not heard of the contest through Jodie: __she__ had figured out at once that the way to improve your chances was to reduce the potential pool of competitors by __not__ telling people about it.

'No hard feelings, right?' she said to him.

'Why would you have any?' he replied.

* * *

Sonny sat in the school cafeteria explaining to Jane how the cards were stacked against him. He didn't know how he could be expected to compete, in a contest like this, with Jodie Landon; and Upchuck, having discovered that Wizard CEO Mark Straum had set up a small business importing exotic candies while still at school, had done the same himself. He had offered Sonny an opportunity to invest in his dot-com as an incentive to compare notes on their applications and interview plans (he had also offered a wasabi gummy-fish of the kind flavored by Straum). Sonny couldn't imagine how he'd been able to turn Upchuck down.

He hadn't exactly expected sympathy, as such, from Jane, but her reactions suggested that she was preoccupied by something which was bugging her on her own account. Before Sonny could figure out what it was, Jodie came up to their table. Sonny's sarcasm about the way she'd used the information he'd given her had elicited some kind of remorse. She tried to make it up to him by sharing information about an interview coach her father had found out about. Sonny had already heard of this same Dr Danada from his mother. Hearing Sonny and Jodie talking, Jane echoed, unknowingly, the sentiments Sonny had expressed to his mother when she first made the suggestion, about the unfairness of any advantage that might be provided by interview coaching. Jane's sarcasm made Jodie remark that she sounded almost like Sonny.

Sonny said, 'Does that mean I've been sounding like you?'

At that moment Brittany chanced to pass their table and gave them all one of her perennially insufferable sunshine greetings.

Sonny said, 'If any of us start to sound like her, it's time to panic.'

* * *

The ultimate horror of the competition for the Wizard Foundation Prize was revealed to Sonny by Stacy, who had come over to help him practice for his interview. Somehow (did the place her father got her a part time job at leave corporate annual reports lying around the house for the family's light reading?) Stacy had found out that Wizard had a hideous record of employment discrimination. After a little routine sarcastic sparring she laid out the facts for Sonny. Sonny wondered whether Jodie knew, remembering the experience of working with her on Mrs Bennett's 'real-life economics' project.

Stacy was surprised by the calmness of Sonny's reaction. 'That's it? They discri, discri, they don't hire girls or gays or blacks. No protesting of sexism and racism and stuff? This is where, like, we should leap up and swear we won't allow this. This is bad and bad stuff shouldn't be allowed.'

'Yeah, it is bad.'

'So why aren't you leaping and stuff with me?'

'Um, my foot's asleep.'

* * *

When Sonny had digested Stacy's information a little, all he could think of to do was share it with Jodie. He figured that if he was going to act on Stacy's implied advice and take a stand against Wizard's iniquity, that stand might be minimally more effective if he made it in conjunction with at any rate one other person. He went round to the Landons' at once.

He'd just finished explaining to Jodie what he'd learned from Stacy when her father happened to walk in. It turned out he already knew all about Wizard from reading an interview with CEO Straum, whom he described as one of 'your redneck billionaires'. But his view of what to do about the situation was different from Sonny's (or Stacy's). He figured that the best thing to influence Wizard to change would be for a brilliant young black woman to win the scholarship. The way to make a difference was not to boycott the competition but to win it.

Sonny figured that Mr Landon might be excited about the possibility of Jodie winning the prize, but he wouldn't be so excited about Sonny winning the prize—Sonny was, after all, neither black nor a woman, and anyway, he didn't think Mr Landon liked him. But nevertheless, unintentionally, the man had given him the germ of an idea. He wasn't sure he wanted to discuss it with Jodie, but the issue didn't arise, because she had to rush off for her coaching session with Dr Danada.

* * *

At his own session with Danada, Sonny let the words wash over him and relied on reflexive sarcasm for his end of the exchange. Most of Danada's spray was marketing-speak of a kind Sonny was already familiar with, except it was even more distasteful when he himself was being treated as the product. When he responded to Danada's suggestion about a 'million-dollar smile' by saying 'Squander my million-dollar smile on a ten-thousand-dollar prize? That's crazy talk', the mighty brain he was dealing with leapt Sherlock-Holmes-like to the conclusion that he was 'giving off mixed signals', and asked him whether he really wanted the scholarship.

For a moment it seemed as if they might be on the brink of a serious conversation about what it said about your own ethics if you were competing for a prize offered by a company with ethical problems (problems which Sonny would have described to Danada if he'd shown the slightest interest).

Instead Danada suggested they discuss the clothes Sonny would wear to the interview.

* * *

Sonny bitched to Jane at length and in detail about his session with Danada. He figured that a good bitching session would dissipate some of the strain their bond had been under. Instead it just seemed to aggravate whatever it was that had been eating Jane up from the inside like a parasitoid wasp. She didn't approve of Sonny's 'sucking up' (from his point of view his problem was that he wasn't sucking up, and he protested as much to her); she didn't approve of interview coaching; she didn't approve of applying for scholarships at all.

'It's all part of buying into the system', she wound up, 'and buying into the system is another way of saying sucking up.'

'Who made you the Chicago Eight?' Sonny said. 'This isn't the way you usually think.'

'What do you know about how I think?' Jane ranted. 'Just because a person doesn't go around applying for scholarships and using every ten-dollar word they know, it doesn't mean they're stupid', she said, and walked off and left him.

Sonny stared after her.

As if he needed anything more to brood about (not that he needed specific occasion to brood at all) …

He brooded a good deal more before the time came for the interview with the Wizard Corporation man (and of course it was a man, and a white man, and dollars-to-doughnuts a straight white man). He knew he was going to give the interviewer some truth, but how much truth? and at which point? The interviewer—his name was Brower—met all three Lawndale High candidates at once, and Sonny felt uncomfortable about going for maximal disruption of proceedings before Jodie and Upchuck had their chance. He'd told Jodie what he knew and she'd taken a different point of view about how to respond. Of course it was a completely mistaken point of view, he was right and she was wrong, but still … if he objected to the way Wizard Corporation treated women and minorities …

So for most of the interview process he didn't make too many waves. He just let the interviewer's stale, stupid, stock questions wash over him. While Jodie and Upchuck supplied over-earnest stock answers (mixed with occasional flattery for the interviewer's line of patter or his general presentation), Sonny limited his own contribution to tersely wising off. The interviewer showed no signs of appreciation for that, but Sonny did notice that he showed no greater appreciation for the ways Jodie and Upchuck variously tried to suck up to him: his face kept getting longer and longer. So it went, that is, until the end of the question-and-answer routine. Then the interviewer demonstrated that he had powers of observation and deduction almost in the Danada class: he suggested that Sonny had an attitude problem and asked whether he was trying to sabotage himself.

'Sabotage myself', Sonny repeated without question mark or other inflection. 'I've answered all your questions truthfully, and I suppose you'd pretend that's what you want. But if I were really trying to sabotage myself, don't you think I would have made a point of emphasizing from the beginning how gay I am? With the CEO Wizard has, I don't suppose you're any more interested in encouraging faggots than you are in encouraging women or minorities.'

'Oh', said Brower. He looked down at his notebook and flipped up a couple of pages. 'That essay of yours wasn't a light-hearted spoof after all, then.'

For a moment Sonny was taken aback. Had he been short-listed for interview because they'd liked his essay when they thought it was a light-hearted spoof? He recovered.

'No, Mr Brower, it wasn't. I'd really like to see a world where people are judged only on the content of their character—not on their colour, not on their chromosomes, and not on the kind of company they like to keep, intimately speaking. If the Wizard Corporation isn't comfortable with that kind of world, I say so much the worse for the Wizard Corporation. If you feel queer about giving your scholarship to a queer, then I think you're the ones with the attitude problem.'

* * *

Neither Jodie nor Upchuck got the scholarship either.

* * *

The three of them sat on the footpath sharing the misery. Jodie lamented the possibility that her answers had been too pat. Upchuck lamented the possibility that he'd relied on the wrong kind of wasabi gummy-fish (neglecting the possibility that Brower didn't have to like something just because his CEO did).

They all knew why Sonny hadn't got the prize. But Jodie added, 'That wasn't a bad speech you made in there, though.'

'Yeah, well, I talk a good game. But all my high and mighty posturing about integrity wasn't enough to stop me from going to that phony coach. I did want that scholarship. In the end I figured out that I didn't want it badly enough to turn fake, but I wanted it badly enough to get mad at you for applying. Sorry about that.'

'Sorry I didn't tell you I was going to apply. I can't believe I didn't. I can't believe I sucked up to those racist, sexist goons at Wizard, either.'

'Me neither. Who would have thought we'd be able to pursue excellence and scumminess, both at the same time.'

Upchuck burst into another lament at his own failure to get the scholarship, but this time, as he did it, he did them both the favor of getting up and walking away.

Sonny stood up too and tried to flog sincerity into his voice as he said to Jodie, 'Nothing personal, and no offense intended, but I think I'd rather be by myself for a while, too.' He turned and walked back into the school.

With complete normality, his fellow-students left him alone, until later when he was sitting at a table in the cafeteria and Jane came up to him. She'd heard about what had happened from Jodie and had come to commiserate with him, but what he wanted to know was the explanation of the attitude she'd been taking.

'No reason', was Jane's answer to his question. 'Except maybe … seeing the big brains compete for a prize based on their academic achievement—well deserved, don't get me wrong—might possibly have made little Janey feel a bit … I don't know.'

'Left out?' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Like a gay black woman hoping for a promotion at Wizard Corporation?'

'Like somebody who isn't an academic achiever seeing what the people who are get in return. I'm good at the things I'm good at. Grades aren't one of them.'

Sonny gave Jane an eyebrow flash. 'Envying me my experience of ritual humiliation?'

'Are you willing to admit yet that you're more competitive than you thought?'

'We never used to think about things like this. What's happened to us?'

'I don't know.' Jane sighed. 'Selling out?'

'I'm not exactly ready to jump the fence into changing who I am, just to get ahead with Wizard Corporation.' Sonny sighed too. 'But I am feeling how it's hard to resist being co-opted.'

'Maybe we're just getting older.'

'Yeah, I felt a twinge of arthritis when I woke up this morning.'

* * *

The real end of the story didn't come until a few days later, when a letter arrived at the Morgendorffer house addressed, strangely, to 'Mr Jacob "Sonny" Morgendorffer, Jr'. Sonny realized he could only resolve his puzzlement at the superscription by opening it. The letter inside read as follows.

 ** _ **Dear Sonny,**_**

 ** _ **Of course you were right about my not being able to recommend you for the prize—especially when I imagined myself trying to answer some of the questions I might have been asked about why I was recommending you. Wizard Corporation, as you guessed, is not an environment in which there is a welcome for people who are openly like you—or like me.**_**

 ** _ **I won't ask you not to think too harshly of me—I can see that would be futile. I will only say that I wish you the good fortune which will ensure that you never find yourself forced, as I have been, to accept employment which is implicitly conditional on constantly concealing your identity.**_**

It was signed 'R. N. Brower'.

Sorry flipped the letter over a couple of times. "Huh. Once again I feel like an ass for pretending to be gay." He sighs. "Maybe I should stop." He thinks of Stacy. "Except it might hurt her if I did."

He walks up the stairs to his room to do what Sonny did best, think.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Prize Fighters' by Neena Beber**_**


	15. Chapter 15

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 _ _ **65\. Is There A Home Plate?**__

That was odd.

What was he doing asleep at 4:07?

Or rather, now that his mind started to focus, what was he doing waking up at 4:07?

Unless it was 4:07am … but in that case, when had he gone to bed?

Simple: he hadn't formally gone to bed, he had just fallen asleep while on Sonny's bed, and now it was four-oh-se-oops.

Stacy carefully shook Sonny awake. She must have found reading her macroeconomics text as soporific as he had found reading Kant's __Critique Of Pure Reason__ , or they'd never have got into this mess.

Sonny, waking, took in the full import of the clock's message as readily as Stacy had. A speedy and silent departure was of the essence. The bedroom door squeaked as Sonny opened it, and they quietly agreed that Stacy should go alone to minimize the noise.

She reached the front door without incident, but when she tried to turn the handle it stuck. It was in this position that she was surprised by Sonny's father, emerging from the kitchen in his pajamas carrying an after-midnight snack. Stacy started fumbling for an explanation, but Sonny's father only commiserated with Stacy's difficulties and offered assistance getting the door open. Stacy didn't dare chance her luck by saying anything, so she just held Mr Morgendorffer's plate as this unexpected early-morning apparition released the sticky latch and then asked Stacy, as she handed back the food, whether she'd ever tried sake.

Stacy guessed that must be what she was smelling on the other's breath. That might help to explain the strange behaviour.

'Um, no', she said. 'You know, the age thing.' She shrugged in explanation and then escaped.

* * *

Helen was almost asleep but she was conscious of Jake's returning to bed. She wasn't surprised he'd been up. They'd spent an insufferable evening with the insufferable 'Tokyo Toby' at his sushi bar—Jake was hoping to get the marketing business. She'd avoided swallowing any of the food, but Jake had not held back.

'No wonder you can't sleep', she muttered. 'Tokyo Toby's is poison.'

'Is not', Jake said, already settled back in beside her. He still sounded a little spaced from all the sake he'd drunk, as if he might be ready to drowse off again, when he shocked her awake with the words, 'hey, I forgot to offer Stacy some lazonny …'

'What!' she said, and then, partially recovering herself, 'What was Stacy doing here at this time of night?' She sat up in bed and stared at her husband. He stirred and squirmed a little higher on the pillows.

'Oh, she just had trouble opening the door. You know how it sticks sometimes, don't you?'

Helen turned in disbelief. She looked round at the clock and then back to her husband, and reached out to shake him by the shoulder.

'Jake', she hissed, 'it is ten past four in the morning. Stacy must have been here all night! With Sonny! What do you think they've been doing?'

Jake opened his eyes. 'Oh! But … I mean … what … Helen, do you think … should we …'

'Pull yourself together, Jake! We're talking about two teenagers spending all night together!'

Jake sat up and shivered. 'Wait a minute, Helen … oh, maybe I had a little too much sake …'

'Try to concentrate, Jake! This is our son!'

'Right! Um … do you think she was staying with Quinn?'

Helen hesitated. "I, maybe. But why sneak out this late?"

"Oh. Maybe I should talk with him?"

Helen bit her lip as she thought of what to do. She knew something had been holding back her impulse to leap up and march straight into Sonny's room to demand an explanation. She wasn't confident that Jake could handle the situation any better than she could—but it was probably the right first move.

'Well', she said, 'it might be a good start.' He sat there looking at her until she burst out, 'Go on, then!'

* * *

As soon as he'd got Stacy out of his room, Sonny had changed from his daywear to his nightwear and put himself to bed. He was starting to relax again, halfway back to sleep, when he heard his mother loudly exclaim, 'What?'

 _ _No more sleep tonight__ , he thought, sitting up alert again as he started counting the seconds. But instead of his mother appearing at his door in full cry, there was only the sound of aroused voices from his parents' bedroom. A surprising and disquieting length of time passed before his door opened again, and then it was his father and not his mother that he saw, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

Sonny said, 'Hi, Dad.'

'Hi! Ah … mind if I come in?'

'I … sure, why not?' Sonny swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached out to pick up his glasses and put them on. Having his father instead of his mother do the parenting was unusual, but that didn't mean it was bad.

Correction, that didn't mean it was worse.

Sonny watched the almost concealed spasms as his father moved across the room towards him. And was he— _ _sniffing?__ It was a little, Sonny imagined, like watching an agitated bloodhound trying to catch a scent. Sonny would have been prepared to risk a small wager on just what smell it was that his father was trying to pick up. He decided to try to put them both out of his father's misery.

'Dad', he said, 'Stacy and I had a study date last night. We were both reading textbooks in the living room, and then Quinn came in and started babbling about her date so that we couldn't concentrate. That's why we came up here to my room instead. Then, when Quinn started playing the radio, we shut the door so we could keep trying to concentrate on the books. But they were both so dry that they bored us to sleep. That's all. Whatever else you and Mom might be imagining us doing, we weren't.'

'Okay, um … do you mind if I sit down?' Sonny's father gestured towards the bed.

'No, go ahead. But you don't need to give me a lecture about responsibility. Anyway, as I think I told you once before, nobody's going to get pregnant in this room. I, we, not where near that stage." He didn't want to admit how much they had done. Not that it was much. Even if he and Stacy had been, hanging out, dating, for every months. "Maybe you need to reassure Mom on that point?'

Sonny's father had lowered himself gingerly onto the bed. 'I don't really like lectures', he mumbled.

'But you'd rather give one to me than to Mom? or than get one from her? about parental responsibility?'

'Actually, I'm not feeling so good. I think it might be that sushi I had for dinner.' Sonny's father looked away from him and then back again. 'But I am your father, Sonny, and you are my son. We can talk!' His face changed. 'Can't we?'

'Sure.' Sonny shrugged. 'But there's nothing to talk about, Dad. Trust me.'

'Of course I trust my boy!' Sonny's father again looked to the door and then back to him. 'But there's some things …'

Sonny sighed. 'Dad, I do know about … you know, stuff.'

'Of course you do! You're a bright boy! You know all kinds of stuff! But … well, it's like this. When a boy and a girl are together, there's … like, you know, the bases?'

Sonny drew his brows together. 'You mean, like when they call kissing "first base" and touching." Sonny stops. "And so on?'

'Right! See, I knew you knew this stuff! And you know that with a boy and a girl everybody kind of expects that the boy will want to go ahead and the girl will want to decide when they're ready?'

Sonny genuinely didn't know where his father was going with this. He just nodded. His father swallowed before going on.

'But when you've been together, like you and Stacy, for a long time, you know how far you're going, and anyway because you might think, or some people might think, that you don't have to worry about who's ready for what and you should just keep going and—what I'm trying to say is, Sonny, you always think about everything you do before you do it, don't you?'

Sonny nodded.

'Well, that's good! You keep doing that!' Sonny's father swallowed again, harder than before. 'I __really__ don't feel so good! I have to get a drink!' He sprang up from the bed and dashed out of the room.

Sonny took off his glasses and set them down safely. He sat on the bed for a while before getting up to turn the light out again. Then he stood by the light switch for a while before walking back to the bed, where he stood in yet more thought before getting back under the covers, and even then it took about another half hour before he finally dropped back into a light doze.

He overslept, and so had to rush to be ready for school. When he came through the kitchen, his mother was there and he could tell that she half-wanted to talk with him but was feeling uncomfortable about it. What __he__ was thinking and feeling, thanks to a decade of practice on his part, she couldn't read.

'Sorry, Mom, big rush to get to school. I talked to Dad last night. Nothing happened with Stacy. Everything's okay. Have to go now.'

The one thing practice hadn't given him was the ability to say all that as quickly as Quinn would have, with commas instead of periods. That meant his mother had time to gather herself and start to say something, but before she could fully articulate whatever it was, his father came into the room and started asking his wife to look down his throat because he was sure there was something there, giving Sonny the chance to complete his escape.

From his mother, but not from his thoughts.

He was just in time to catch Jane for the walk to school. He let Jane pull the conversational weight, limiting himself mostly to phatic contributions, but she was __much__ too sharp (and much too familiar with him) not to notice, and much too candid not to call him on it.

'Well …', Sonny said.

'Out with it, Morgendorffer. Does this have anything to do with your being late this morning?'

'You're complaining about __my__ being tardy?'

'It wouldn't be the first time, but I wasn't complaining, and stop trying to change the subject.' Jane put her fists on her hips and raised an eyebrow at Sonny.

Sonny scratched behind his ear, breathed in, breathed out. 'I had a study date with Stacy last night. We were both reading excessively dry texts and we fell asleep without meaning to and didn't wake up until after four in the morning. Then my Dad caught Stacy trying to sneak out of the house unobserved, and after he came upstairs to talk with me I had … trouble getting back to sleep and overslept a little.'

'Are you trying to tell me that you had Stacy in your bedroom practically all night?'

'No, I'm trying to avoid telling you that. Do you want to tell me whether you ever had Tom in your bedroom all night?'

'I knew I should have jumped him while I had the chance!' Jane started to backpedal when she saw Sonny's eyes and lips narrow. 'Kidding! I told you, I'm waiting till college. Eleven a.m. on move-in day.'

'At least you've got a plan. Look, I don't want to talk about the details of what you and Tom did or did not do together. And I definitely don't want to talk about the details of what Stacy and I have or have not done together.'

'Good', said Jane. 'But … there's something else, isn't there?'

'Well …' Sonny hesitated a moment longer, and then explained what his father had said to him. He wound up by saying, 'I think he may have kinda had a point. Do you remember telling me about what went on with you and that Alison at the artists' colony? Did you ever establish exactly what it was she wanted to do with you?'

Jane paused for a moment. 'Not __exactly__ … I see what you mean.'

'And thinking afterwards about what Dad said, I realized something else. People tend to think of those markers in the … physical development of a relationship as being connected with its … ah … er …'—Sonny paused to clear his throat—'… emotional development. If a relationship is … getting further … physically, then it's also getting further in … other ways.'

'But if relationships hinge on physical intimacy', said Jane, and rolled her eyes, 'wouldn't that mean our parents are still doing it?'

'That's absurd.'

Jane brandished a finger. 'Exactly my point.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear as they walked on. Then he said, 'But married with children and not doing it any more is another standard relationship phase for … standard couples or non-standard ones.'

'Well, I see why you want to talk about this.' Jane cocked her head at Sonny. 'But why am I the person you're talking about it with?'

"Because it might mean..."

"Oh." Jane looks away hiding the look on her face. "You two have been together for a long time. Longer than Tom and I were."

"That's just it. We've been hanging out, dating, what ever for a long time. At first I was unsure of what I was doing. I over thought every word I said. I can't not over think." Sonny sighs. "I guess I should talk with her."

* * *

'Stacy …', Sonny began.

'You're saying my name that way you do when you're feeling like, emotional pressure, and stuff.'

Sonny blinked. 'Actually, I have been feeling under emotional pressure ever since … well, I've been thinking recently.'

'When aren't you? You're super smart and super smart people think all the time.'

'You remember the other night, when you fell asleep at my place, unintentionally?'

'Sure. Do you know that your Dad found me as I was getting out the door? He didn't seem bothered by the situation. You didn't get into trouble, did you?'

'No, but … you know how we've done a few things … I mean, physically … but there's also lots of stuff we haven't done?'

'Hey, we talked about this already. I don't want you to think you're pushing me into anything you're not. I don't want to push you either. Like, respect each other and stuff. Right?'

'Right.' Sonny nodded. 'Except …'

'Except what?'

'Except I don't know what I'm ready for.' Sonny put his hand over his navel. Stacy fidgeted with her hair or scrunchie, he did so with his navel ring. 'I'm—I'm scared.'

'If you're scared how do you think I feel? If you're not ready I'm happy to leave it at that.'

"Really?"

"Well, I mean, I think about it. Terrified but think about it too. No one else in the Fashion Club has done like, any thing, but they don't have any one like I do. You make me happy."

'Happy?'

'Yes!'

Sonny shook his head. 'Anyway, the point is that it's not the same thing. Just because I'm scared of more intimacy doesn't mean I'm not ready for it. I'm scared of finding out that I'm not ready … and scared of finding out that I am. And either way I'm scared of how you'd feel, and the effect it could have on our relationship.'

Stacy leaned in and gave Sonny a fleeting kiss.

'I think we just did reach a higher level of intimacy', she said. 'And as for the effect on our relationship—whatever you do or don't want to do, and however it works out, I'll still be here.'

'Then maybe I'm ready to find out a little more—even if I am scared.'

Stacy looked carefully at Sonny. 'If that's really how you feel—my dad is going out of town next weekend.'

Sonny failed to control a flinch. 'Your place?'

Stacy shrugged her shoulders as she started playing with her hair. 'Would you prefer your place?'

'My place? Where my parents live? No, no, uh … no, I guess it had better be your place.'

Stacy inclined her head. 'We don't have to do any thing more. I mean, I'm scared too. Like, what if I'm bad? I, I've never,' Her face almost turns bright red. "We can do some things, more, but not, um,"

Sonny, feeling the same way, gave an over-emphatic nod. 'Your place, Saturday, eight o'clock.'

'Fine', said Stacy. She smiled. 'Okay?'

'Don't get carried away', Sonny said. 'We're just going to see where this goes, that's all. No fixed plans.'

'That works for me. I mean every word of that.' Stacy gazed into Sonny's eyes and gave him another fleeting kiss. 'I think we're making the right choice—but if you do feel too scared, all you have to do is say so.'

"Same." The two can't make eye contact again as they walk separate ways.

* * *

'Oh', said Sonny, at twenty past eight, at the door to Stacy's bedroom.

'It's the candles, right? Sorry. I kinda like them, but if they don't feel right to you, …'

'No, it's not …'—Sonny wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. He looked around Stacy's bedroom. 'Actually', he went on, 'it's a good idea. I kept thinking "Light? No light? Light? No light?", but this way things won't be concealed but also won't be glaring.' He put one hand over his navel. 'The music …'

'You don't like it?' Stacy switched it off, then turned to face Sonny again. 'I guess I made the right decision not to um, never mind.'

Sonny looked at Stacy for a moment, with his hand still over his navel, then walked to the bed, sat down, and started unlacing his shoes. 'No shoes on the bed, right?'

Stacy came over to the bed and sat down next to him, just within arm's reach. 'Sounds like a good idea.' She started taking her fashionable shoes off as well.

When they were both barefoot, Stacy leaned over to kiss Sonny. As he returned the kiss, Sonny put his hands on Stacy's shoulders. When they separated, he left his hands there while he looked into Stacy's eyes for a moment before dropping his gaze. He moved his hands from Stacy's shoulders and started pulling Stacy's top free of her pants. 'Okay if I do this?' he said.

Stacy nodded. 'If you want to', she said, and Sonny moved his hands round to the back to unhook... And kissed Stacy again.

* * *

As Sonny sat on a chair doing up his shoes, Stacy, still lying on the bed, turned her head to look at the clock. 'Quarter past ten', she said.

'Yeah', Sonny said, 'I really should be getting home. My Dad's been freaking out about a parasite he got from some bad sushi, and I feel like I should be there for him.' He stood up and scratched behind his ear.

'What are you thinking about?'

'Just, are we ok? I know we thought we would, but, we're not, I mean, I enjoyed that we did more but, not,'

Stacy simply nodded and smiled. 'It's ok. I, liked, what we did too. Maybe another time we can like, do the rest.'

'A next time.' Sonny screamed in his own mind to his brain to stop thinking. Stop. Stop!

Stacy nodded again.

'But we don't talk about it', Sonny said.

'Ok, sure', Stacy said.

Sonny checks his clothes to make sure they weren't too wrinkled. "I, I should go. I lock the door behind me."

"Ok. Um, good night. And uh, I,"

"I know. I, too."

With that, he gave her one last look before turning and leaving.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'My Night At Daria's' by Peggy Nicoll**_**


	16. Chapter 16

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 ** **66\. 'When The Bummers Bum …'****

Sonny explained to Jane that Stacy and her father were going away for a week to 'the cove' for a wedding, 'so more time for you and me to hang out', he concluded.

'Haven't we had this conversation before?' said Jane. 'Only I said what you're saying and you said what I'm saying?'

'No, not all of it. That part about how her family must be training a secret militia at "the cove" has the unmistakable mark of Jane Lane on it, although now that you've given me the idea I may appropriate it for a story. It would make some kind of sense', Sonny said. 'More sense than Onepu, whom I detect approaching us from seven o'clock.'

'Sonny! Jane! I hope I'm not interrupting anything. I would very much like to talk to you about something, but I wouldn't want to take up your time if you're too busy to listen.'

'For you, Ms Onepu', Sonny said, 'always.'

'Oh! Well … I'm not sure I follow your meaning.'

'That's right.'

Onepu blinked and shuddered slightly like a dog shaking off water. 'I do think this is a marvelous opportunity for you, as well as being the chance to offer an important benefit to the children who will be coming here next year. We're looking for leaders for the tours we give them so that they can learn what to expect from high school. Sonny and Jane, this would be a wonderful chance for you to develop your abilities through new experiences, and I know you have so much to offer to the next intake of new students.'

Jane said, 'I'll do it.'

Sonny stared at her.

Jane shrugged. 'Hey, if I'm giving a tour then I can't be in class. Simple physics.'

'Thank you, Jane. I know next year's students will benefit from your unique perspective. And Sonny, you have a unique perspective too! I'm sure you'll consider it and make the right decision. I won't take up any more of your valuable time. I must hurry to tell Principal Taylor who's volunteered. I know he's particularly keen to have you involved.' Onepu scurried.

Sonny kept staring at Jane, who said, 'Well?'

'Taylor's keen. Don't you feel any misgivings?'

'I leave the job of figuring out what's going on in the dungeon dimensions of the principal's mind to the appropriately qualified person, meaning you. What's going on in your mind, and in Stacy's? Has she asked you out to "the cove"? Not that I'm not looking forward to the opportunity for us to hang out, but, you know, your girlfriend is going to be away for a week.'

'She said he'd check with her dad, …'

Jane interjected, 'He'll probably say yes, you know.'

'His whole family's going to be there. Just because they wouldn't have a problem with Stacy's boyfriend doesn't mean …'

'If she wants a date to a wedding I doubt they would do any thing to you. If she likes you then she likes you and that should be good enough for her family.'

'Yeah, I guess', Sonny admitted, 'but at the cove it'd still be a case of too many people, not enough escape routes.'

* * *

The Morgendorffers had taken delivery of a new refrigerator. Oddly, although the old refrigerator had been carted away, the big cardboard box in which the new one had been delivered had been left in the back yard. Helen asked Sonny and Quinn to put it out on the kerb in front of the house for collection.

Sonny said, 'Isn't that sort of brute donkey work the reason they made fathers?'

Helen was a little surprised. 'I wouldn't have expected you to champion traditional roles like that, Sonny, but if that's the way you're thinking, you're well past the age when the oldest son starts taking on the role of the man of the house when the father is absent.'

'I wasn't being traditional, I was being lazy. Where is Dad, anyway?'

'He heard about a last-minute opening at a marketing conference, so he took it.'

'He didn't say anything about a last-minute trip.'

Helen looked at Sonny. He'd been getting an odd expression on his face since he noticed the refrigerator box, which was all the stranger because it was unusual to detect any expression at all on his face, and the news of his father's absence seemed to be adding to the effect. She explained to him carefully that Jake hadn't said anything about the trip because it was last-minute. Across her mind flashed the words 'That's what last-minute __means__ '. It was the sort of thing Sonny himself might have said, but it wouldn't be helpful from her in this situation.

Sonny's face returned to its usual deadpan for a moment, and then another odd expression came over it as he asked Helen whether they'd had a refrigerator box, like the one in the yard, when he'd been younger. He said he remembered spending a lot of time playing in one.

'Oh, I doubt that, Sonny', she said. 'I don't remember you doing much playing at all.'

When she saw the look on his face she thought, __And I was doing so well!__

* * *

Sonny was being weirder than usual. First he wanted to talk about a refrigerator box, like the one they were dragging out to the kerb, which he said they'd had when they were kids. A refrigerator box? Really, who cared? Only somebody weird like Sonny. Who else would want to talk about something like that?

When Quinn told him she wasn't interested in his stroll down memory road, Sonny asked her what she thought was 'really' the reason their Dad had gone away. Quinn got so fed up that she took Sonny at his word when he said he could manage the job by himself. But that turned out to be one of Sonny's tricks, or something, because somehow she was the one who got blamed by their Mom the next morning when the box was still in the back yard, and she ended up being the one who had to drag it out to the kerb by herself. How much could one freakin' girl take? Even an enormously freakin' popular one!

* * *

'Morgendorffer.' Principal Taylor's head swiveled like a gun turret. 'Lane', he said more dismissively before returning his sights to his first target. 'Perhaps you feel that you don't know enough about your old high school to be an effective tour guide for a new intake of students. But then, perhaps if you don't graduate on schedule you'll have an opportunity to fill the gaps in your knowledge.'

'I know you're not suggesting that a student could be prevented from graduating for electing not to participate in a purely voluntary activity. So what are you suggesting?'

Taylor smiled with compressed lips. 'I know, Morgendorffer, that you are well aware that gym class is not a purely voluntary activity, and that a student who was found not to have completed the minimum compulsory number of gym classes might very well be prevented from graduating.'

'Unless that student was found to have been excused from the requirements.'

'You mean', Taylor said, 'if that student was found to have been __validly__ excused from the requirements. Are you aware that our former school nurse, the one who by an odd coincidence happened to come from the same little home village as former Principal Li, has been replaced? If the new school nurse should happen to find, while familiarizing herself with the records, that there was some doubt about the circumstances in which you were excused from gym class, then, as a conscientious administrator, I would have __no choice__ ', Taylor said, 'but to enforce the school district's rules. But I'm sure that the two of us being obliged to coexist in the same school for another year is an outcome that you desire'—he paused to lick his lips—'even less than I do.'

Sonny looked to Jane. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. He looked back at Taylor. 'We'll do the tours.'

'Ah', he said. 'Not together. If you work separately it will double the size of the cadre of new students who will have had a special opportunity to hear about __exactly__ what sort of principal Lawndale High has and how they should plan on adjusting their behavior accordingly. Lane, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, Morgendorffer can explain to you.' He turned and left them.

Sonny looked at Jane again. 'You gotta know when to hold 'em', he said in explanation, 'know when to fold 'em.'

'Next year he'll still be Principal Taylor of Lawndale High', Jane said. 'Do we really need more revenge than that?'

* * *

When the refrigerator box was still in the back yard, Helen figured that Sonny rather than Quinn must be responsible. He'd certainly had a strange reaction to it, and when she raised the subject with him again, he still did, accusing her of 'refusing to acknowledge' that they'd had a box like it when he was younger. He was still unaccountably suspicious about his father's absence, too. Helen was driven by his doubt to challenge him to call Jake for confirmation.

'Why?' Sonny said. 'So he can lie to me too? Where is he really?'

Now Helen was not just disturbed for herself about the attitude Sonny was taking, but seriously concerned about his well-being. But when she expressed that concern, all he wanted to talk about was a huge fight which he was imagining, between her and Jake, about himself, when he was little. She was flummoxed, but when she couldn't recall anything of the kind, he stood up, accused her flatly of lying (again), and walked out of the room. She watched him go. Not for the first time, she wished she'd found better ways of communicating with him.

* * *

Much later, Stacy figured out that Sonny had actually called her on what must have been 'The Night Of The Refrigerator Box'. Stacy hadn't been home, and the only message Sonny had left with Stacy's father was just that he'd called, not even asking Stacy to call back. So she'd thought nothing of it at the time. After all, when Sonny had declined her invitation to come to the cove for a couple of nights, Stacy had joked about being worried that Sonny couldn't cope without her, and Sonny had just joked back that after a week without Stacy cramping his style he might want to make it permanent. Of course Stacy hadn't worried about that. But when Stacy took the call from Sonny at the cove it didn't sound as if Sonny was joking. At first Stacy had thought he was, Sonny being so hard to read, but it quickly became clear that he really did want Stacy to come back early if he could. Then he asked whether Stacy still wanted him to come to the cove.

'Well, you could, but it's even duller than I thought', Stacy said. 'I mean, it would be great for me if you came up, but I think you'd have a horrible time.'

'So you lied to me, too', Sonny said. Stacy had never heard him sound this way. Sonny misinterpreted was common enough, but Sonny misinterpreting worried her. Even if Stacy had changed her mind, that wouldn't be the same thing as a lie, but she hadn't changed her mind. What she'd said was just the objective truth, and normally Sonny would have grasped it without trouble. Stacy tried to reassure Sonny with a more emphatic and unqualified repetition of the invitation, but now Sonny had changed __his__ mind. At least he wanted Stacy to call him the next day. She had the idea that if she could keep the conversation going she might find out something about what was bugging Sonny, but Sonny broke the connection.

* * *

Jane figured that if Sonny could cope with being boxed into the freshman tours by Taylor, he should be able to cope with a refrigerator box. She couldn't understand why he kept insisting that it meant something more. She tried joking about it, but that didn't help. She absolutely couldn't understand why he'd crawled inside it. He insisted that sitting in there 'felt right'. She was ashamed that the only reason she could give him for getting out was that the neighbors might talk.

'Um … good', he replied. 'Soon they'll progress to cave drawings, and civilization will be on its way.'

That was a more routine response. In fact, a little to her surprise she seemed to have done the trick. Sonny came crawling out again.

* * *

Suddenly Quinn remembered! All Sonny's nagging and all that fussing with the refrigerator box was really stupid, but he had been right about something happening when they were kids in the old house. She'd been three or four years old and she'd been woken by the sounds of a fight: parents yelling, a door slamming, and a car driving away.

She still didn't see how the refrigerator box was important, but it was important to Sonny. She ran outside and found him in the back yard with the refrigerator box. He'd just crawled out of it. His friend Jane was there too.

Quinn told Sonny what she remembered.

'Thank you', Sonny said. 'I knew I wasn't imagining it. Do you remember what they were fighting about?'

'Um … yeah … they were fighting about you.'

After a moment, Sonny got down again and crawled back into the box. Quinn looked at Jane and Jane looked back. Even Jane must think Sonny was being weird. What could be so important about a refrigerator box?

* * *

Ever since he first saw the refrigerator box Sonny had been having fragmentary flashbacks to his childhood, but now, with Quinn's confirmation, the whole sequence was clear in his mind. First there was the scene with his parents accompanying him to a talk with the school counsellor. She'd tried some variation of the Rorschach test on him, suggesting that a black splotch might be seen as a fire truck, a house, or a knight in shining armour rescuing a beautiful princess from a dragon, but he'd resisted that idea. So instead she'd tried just talking with him about playing games with the other children at school. He'd told her that the other children never understood what he was talking about and made fun of him. 'I like to read', he'd said.

Then there was the ride home from school with his parents trying to encourage him to at least try to socialize with the other children. They'd almost been imploring him. But he'd just been tired of everything. Tired of the other children, dullards who called him 'egghead'; tired of his parents siding with the rest of the adult world, always pushing him in directions he didn't want to go when all he wanted was to be left alone; tired of the bouncy bouncy bouncing of Quinn, who was never tired of other children or of anything else. His problems hadn't come from himself, they had come from other people. Why had his parents not been able to see that?

And then that same night he had lain in bed listening to his parents fight. Neither of them had known how to deal with the stress of Sonny's problems and their own helplessness in face of them.

'He doesn't want to fit in, damn it!' Sonny's father had ended by shouting. 'Why can't you admit that?'

'Jake, he's a child, he doesn't know any better!'

'That's what he wants you to believe!'

'Where are you going?'

There'd been no answer to that in words. He'd heard the sounds of doors being slammed, first on the house and then on a car, which drove away. He'd pulled the bed covers around him as he winced at the noise; then, as it faded away, he'd crept out of bed and into—a large refrigerator box! It had been decorated with crayons as a sort of cubby house. He'd sat there, reading, feeling safe in his box …

* * *

Jake arrived home from his conference to find his son sitting in the back yard in a cardboard box, absorbed in his own thoughts. The absorption was a familiar thing, but the sitting in the box he didn't understand.

Helen, when he asked her, didn't understand either. She said that Sonny had been acting so strangely that she would have called Jake if his return flight hadn't already been in the air. He knew that if his wife was perturbed enough to think of actively seeking out his own involvement, something really unusual must be happening. But he had no more idea what was going on than she did.

It was Quinn who held the clue. She reminded them of a quarrel he and Helen had had many years ago. For some reason it was on Sonny's mind again, and bothering him, and that's why he was hiding in the box. Quinn made out that she'd been traumatized for life as well. Jake might not always understand his kids, but he knew better than to believe something like that. Quinn wasn't hiding in a refrigerator box.

Jake and Helen went outside again to try to coax Sonny out so that they could all have a nice talk. When he remained resistant, Helen told him he couldn't spend the rest of his life there. Jake might not have many ideas about parenting but he knew there was no chance of that sort of cliché working on Sonny.

'Sonny', he said instead, '… please come out?'

A little to his surprise, he got through to his son.

* * *

Sonny agreed to come out of the box in exchange for promises of complete honesty. His parents gave them reluctantly, but he was watching them closely and their reluctance made him more confident of their sincerity.

Sitting in the living room, they finally acknowledged the fight they'd had when he was six. Maybe they really had forgotten. It had taken the refrigerator box to remind him, so maybe it was true that it had taken Quinn to remind them.

They started trying to explain the context to him. As he listened to their side of the story, it did start to feel real to him. He understood a lot more now than he did then about the stress from their jobs. Back then, they told him, his father was being slave-driven by a tyrant in a job he hated and his mother was coping with resuming a full-time workload while still raising two small children. He knew a lot more now than he did then about the pressure schools could put on families, parents as well as offspring. They kept getting called into school because of him, and it wasn't the best time for them to be leaving work for conferences with teachers and counselors. He remembered how tense __he__ had felt, but he hadn't realized how tense a time it had been for the family.

They ended up by telling him about the fight he remembered, and how they'd made up afterwards and carried on. 'You happened to be the topic, not the cause', they said, but what could that mean? how could he be the topic of the fight but not the cause? He needed more time to work through all the implications in his mind. More time, and a place. Not in a refrigerator box, but somewhere. Like his father on that long-ago evening, he walked out of the house and got in the car.

On the road, he tried to phone Stacy but could only get Mr. Rowe. Stacy wasn't available to come to the phone, but Mr. Rowe was happy to confirm that the invitation for Sonny to visit 'the cove' was still open. As Sonny thanked him and hung up, it started to rain. As the rain got heavier and road conditions worse, he drove more and more defensively, but he felt committed now and didn't want to turn back.

It was another car, ahead of him, that spun out, triggering a multi-vehicle pile-up. Sonny managed enough control to swerve onto the shoulder and skid more or less safely to a halt.

* * *

Jane pulled up outside a diner called 'Mom's', the place where Sonny had asked her to meet him. Trent had insisted she take his car.

When she walked through the door, Sonny up-ended her perspective by rushing to her from his booth and throwing his arms tightly around her. Being a little shorter than her, his head nestled comfortably in the hollow above her collar bone.

After a moment, she put her arms around him and squeezed back.

He was still damp from the rain that had been falling earlier. Hot coffee sounded a good idea. As they sat in his booth drinking it, she listened to his story. Being reminded of events from eleven years ago had prompted him to re-examine the whole history of his interaction with his parents and focus on his own responsibility for it rather than theirs. From Jane's perspective Sonny and his parents shared the responsibility for giving each other a hard time. But what Sonny had realized was that he hadn't just given his parents a hard time deliberately—he knew about that better than Jane did—but that he'd given them a hard time just by being Sonny Morgendorffer. He explained, so that Jane could understand, going over details of the childhood history she hadn't heard before.

'At age six, I decide I don't need to talk to other kids ever again; my parents are the ones who get called into school. At twelve, I decide to try out some Shakespearean insults on my teachers; my parents are the ones who get called into school. At fifteen, I start writing violent revenge fantasies just to get a reaction …'

For Jane, Sonny didn't need to paint a whole picture. 'Your parents, et cetera, et cetera. Gotcha. But I never got the idea that they minded that much.'

This insight of Jane's, it emerged, was not news to Sonny. He'd already figured out as much, and it just made him feel worse. She wasn't sure what else she could offer him, except to say, 'You really need to discuss this with them.'

'I know, but first I had to talk to somebody I could trust.'

'Yeah, I'm sorry you didn't make it to the cove.'

'I'm not', Sonny said. 'It would have been good to see Stacy, but this way, I got to talk to the person I trust most.'

 _ _Should Sonny trust me so much?__ Jane thought.

'Should you trust me so much?' she said.

'You earned it', he said without inflection, but when he spoke like that she knew he meant it.

'Listen, Sonny—you know when I came in here and you ran at me? Well, I …'

'That? Do you imagine I didn't think about that? I trust you even if you did get a little tingling rush of blood from that.' As he spoke, he reached out and let his hand rest on her wrist for a moment before he took it away again. 'And if you did, you earned that too.'

"What about you?"

"I..." He sipped at his coffee.

They finished their coffee without further speech. It wasn't bad coffee.

* * *

Sonny's parents both hugged him when he came back into the house. It was a day for a lot of hugs.

They sat down to talk about why he'd run away. It turned out they did have some insight. Maybe he didn't always give them enough credit.

Maybe his mother didn't always give his father enough credit, either. She kept trying to cut him off as he struggled to say something about the way they were always being called in to school about Sonny, but eventually he managed to articulate his thought: 'It was part of the deal. It was the other side to you being so smart and perceptive.'

Sonny didn't grasp the full implications at once, so his mother took over the explanation: 'Sonny, you can't have a child with your kind of intelligence and expect him to fit in easily with other kids. We weren't happy to be called into school because we knew it meant you weren't happy.'

His father chimed in again to complete the train of thought: 'But we were never unhappy with you.'

When they put it like that, it made an unnerving amount of sense.

'You can fit in when you __choose__ to fit in', his mother said. 'And you will, too.'

'Yeah!' his father said. 'Like volunteering as a guide for those tours for new students!'

'Oh', said Sonny. 'Those.' He found he was relieved that there were still things his parents didn't understand. He stood up and said, 'I've got a big day with those tomorrow, and I'm kinda beat. I'm going to bed.' He started heading upstairs as his parents wished him a good night. He paused and said, 'I just want to say … it occurs to me that maybe I wasn't the easiest child in the world to raise, and, um … perhaps I'm quite lucky to have you for parents.' He hurried on to his bedroom to spare himself any follow-up. And to spare his parents, too.

In the middle of his bedroom was the refrigerator box. There was a note on top of it. It read, 'Didn't know if you'd need this, but just in case. Quinn'.

He didn't think he __would__ need it, but then again, why close off the option?

He got ready for bed, thinking about how he'd see Stacy soon and explain everything to her. Maybe Stacy would walk with him to school. Then he'd have to give those school tours. Anybody could show people the offices, the classrooms, the lunchroom, Purgatory and Hell (otherwise known as the gym and locker rooms)—what was there that he personally was specially equipped to point out to a bunch of eighth-graders? All the places around the school where he'd been beaten up, perhaps. Would that seem self-pitying? At least it would remind them that school sucked.

He got into bed and turned out the light. By the time you reached eighth grade, you shouldn't need reminding that school sucked. The ones who hadn't figured it out by then would be the ones like Jodie Landon, for whom school didn't suck. Or at least they wouldn't admit it.

Taylor had paired him with Jodie as a tour guide. Jodie could take care of the people who didn't believe that school sucks, the Kevin Thompson and Sandi Griffin types. Was there any advice he could give the others? Stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong? The truth and a lie are not 'sort of the same thing'? He might sound like a suck-up. Maybe he should advise them not to under-value having a friend to watch your back. Maybe he should just advise them never to pass up the offer of a slice of pizza. That would sound credible, at least.

Maybe he'd get some credibility from telling some version of the whole Barch-O'Neill saga. Or maybe that was too wild to believe. Maybe it would make him sound too much like a grandstanding blowhard. Still, he could make it entertaining if he tried, at least for part of the audience. If he did that, he'd feel better about going on to warn them to be careful of Taylor. And anybody who was going to spend four years at Principal Taylor's high school did deserve a warning.

As he started to drift off to sleep, he imagined himself speaking to a crowd of impressionable eighth-graders and saying, 'I can personally guarantee you that, despite the efforts of our previous principal, who was taken away from the school in a straitjacket, there is one competent and psychologically stable teacher at Lawndale High. So be sure to pay close attention from the time you start here, so you can spot that teacher as soon as possible …'

After his last tour of the day, he saw Stacy, and thought about how he missed her while she was away.

He couldn't stop thinking about her, how he wanted to tell her, show her.

But they were still in school.

He walked over to her and whispered. "Hey, I missed you."

She leaned closer to him. "I missed you too." She looks around, sees other students, and smiles. "Sonny, um," She stops talking and starts kissing him.

Several students stop and stare and soon the talking started.

Stacy didn't care. She proudly held his hand and ignored those around her.

Not even the glare and judgment from Sandi could stop her. "Quinn, I thought your brother was gay."

"He's not." Quinn simply left it at that and went off to class.

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Boxing Daria' by Glenn Eichler**_**

 ** _ **A/N**_** ** **Had to happen eventually and figured the end of this episode was perfect. Time away to make him think and miss her. And for her to decide to screw what others say. Anyways, just the movie to go!****


	17. Chapter 17

**_**Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different**_** ** _ **JTL Version**_**

 _ _ **67\. Outlook: Sonny With A Few Clouds**__

Sonny didn't know which colleges his fellow twelfth-graders were applying to, and he liked it that way. It meant that for a little longer he could cherish the daydream of a future where he never again had to hear from or see Kevin Thompson or Charles 'Upchuck' Ruttheimer or Brittany Taylor or that guy with the tattoos and the piercings and the chain running from his nose ring to his earring, whose name Sonny had narrowly avoided learning when they both equally implausibly found their way onto the yearbook staff. Sonny looked back with pride on all the classmates he'd succeeded in not getting to know, even if some of them had beaten him up. If by the usual pattern of misfortune he did end up at college with some of those knuckle-draggers, or some of the jocks or cheerleaders or suck-ups or grinds or bigots or popularity hounds or fashion fiends, maybe he'd be able to continue avoiding them, but wouldn't it be nice if he didn't have to make the effort? How could he bring himself to complete his applications to Raft or Lloyd or Ellis or Bromwell if he knew some of those people were applying to the same place? No doubt he'd find out soon enough that there were just as many disappointing people at college. He could use even a temporary reprieve. So for now, this particular ignorance was, if not bliss, at least lower down on the list of circumstances ranked in order of unpleasantness.

He did know that Jane was applying to Lawndale State and to State University. He was trying to aim a little higher than that himself. In a way, he was expecting Jane to aim a little higher too. She had expressed interest in going to Boston Fine Arts College, but apparently she'd been having trouble putting together the 'killer art portfolio' required with the application. (He'd accidentally interrupted the process by inviting her out for pizza, and she'd told him that she'd 'only cried tears of relief for ten minutes'.) The only positive she seemed to be seeing in BFAC was that it was in the same town as Raft—they could, she said, 'meet on the weekends to eat pizza and complain'. ('Well', Sonny had replied, 'they say college is all about broadening your horizons.')

Attractive as the picture was that Jane painted, Raft was only his second choice, behind Bromwell. But applying to Bromwell presented him with a 'portfolio problem' of his own: they emphasized wide-ranging extracurricular activities much more than he liked. 'Damn well-rounded crap', as Jane had said.

Of course there was another way to 'round out' your 'portfolio' for Bromwell. You could come from a family of prestigious alumni. A family like the Sloanes, for example. Tom's uncle had donated a building. But that would mean talking to Tom. Something neither had done since he broke up with Jane.

Still, despite Jane's sarcastic remarks on the subject, and whatever Tom's motivation might be if Sonny called him, Sonny wanted to go to Bromwell because it was an outstanding university, not because the students engaged in the rectal transport of steel rods.

Besides, he had to try a lot of places. If he didn't get rejected more than once, his mother would think he hadn't sent out enough applications.

His father, on the other hand, was easily reassured by being told that under no circumstances would Sonny ever consider any military academy. He'd been so pleased about this that Sonny had seized the opportunity to let him know that he wasn't going to Middleton, either, smothering the protests about Middleton being a family tradition by pointing out that so was military school. It had even seemed a propitious moment to bring up the idea of Sonny's going on a road trip to check out colleges, first to Bromwell and then after that to the Boston area. Sonny's father had not only approved, he'd gone so far as to persuade Sonny's mother to go along with the idea as well. All she asked Sonny was that he try to be enthusiastic when meeting the college representatives—try to be less unenthusiastic?—at least not insult them to their faces?

Sonny told her he was sure he could guarantee to avoid physical violence.

Of course, what road trip would be complete with out a companion?

Even if it were one he didn't really want...

Knowing that if he wanted to go to Bromwell he would need to use all the cards he could play, he contacted Tom.

After several minutes of uneasiness and awkwardness, Tom figured out what Sonny was trying to ask. "Actually, I was going to drive up to Bromwell and then Boston to check them out."

"Boston?"

"All my safety schools are there. If you want, heck, come with me. More the merrier, right?"

"Boy, aren't you magnanimous."

After a short chuckle Tom responded. "Hey, I let bygones be bygones. Especially since the gones were mostly my fault."

"I, I guess. It would probably make my parents more comfortable if I was in a better car with a better driver."

After a few more minutes of discussion the plans were made.

* * *

Stacy looked at her score on the SAT test. It was over a thousand! Barely, but over. She knew she never would have scored so high if she hadn't asked Sonny to help and tutor her.

Quinn had done... Just as good. Stacy and Quinn congratulated each other.

Sandi and Tiffany however... Not so much. Neither would ever get to Pepperhill. Heck, they might not even make it to Lawndale State.

Quinn and Stacy continue to discuss their scores. "You got your tutor, I got mine." Stacy smiled. "I liked my tutor better."

Quinn gave a nervous laugh. "Um, glad you did."

Sonny finally got in for his appointment to see Lisa Goldwin in the Bromwell admissions office after she finished up her three-quarters of an hour with Tom. The two of them came out of her room chatting like old pals about a Sloane family story Tom had apparently been recounting. As Lisa Goldwin escorted Sonny in for his interview, she wondered aloud whether he was 'as full of Bromwell lore as Tom'.

'Um', said Sonny, already starting to hate himself, 'I doubt it', privately thinking, __Tom seems to be really full of it__.

Once Sonny was seated across from her at her desk, he realized that his mind was automatically reverting to the pattern where he skimmed lightly across the wave crests of somebody else's conversation, absorbing just enough to remain in contact with the main flow. This time, that would definitely not cut it. He needed to focus all his powers of concentration on exactly what she was saying. Unfortunately, the effort of doing so seemed to freeze up the part of his brain he needed to generate usable responses. He was aware that his eyes were shifting evasively from one side of the room to the other, but he didn't seem to be able to stop them. It also didn't help that she was asking stock questions about his impressions of Bromwell and his reasons for wanting to attend. He eventually managed to force sentences out of his mouth. Or perhaps they were only phrases. They made him wish he could forget them as fast as he uttered them—especially the agonising 'ums' and 'ummms'—which only made the whole attention problem worse.

Eventually Lisa Goldwin asked him whether everything was all right.

If she was asking him whether everything was all right, obviously everything was not all right.

'Ummm', he said ( _ _No! Dammit, no!__ ), 'do you think we might possibly start over, and this time, I'll just answer your questions instead of agonizing over them internally and then blurting out something asinine?'

She laughed professionally and said, 'Sure'.

Sure Sonny was not.

When he found himself back with Tom in the outer office, Tom suggested that they get a cup of coffee.

'We should probably get going', Sonny said, 'if we want to make Boston by dinner.'

Tom looked at him closely and lowered his voice. 'That bad, huh?'

Sonny's glance flicked quickly to the secretary. 'If you want to talk about it …'

'Right', Tom said briskly, 'let's get going. Don't want to be late to Boston.'

As they headed back towards where Tom had parked his car, Sonny explained. 'Once I stopped worrying about what to say and just said it, I thought the interview went okay, but by then I'd used up five of my fifteen minutes.' He looked across at Tom. 'There's something you're not saying.'

'Well, I did notice you weren't in there so long … listen, we can focus on Raft tomorrow. I don't really need to visit any more colleges.'

 _ _Don't you?__ Sonny said to himself. __I thought all your 'safeties' were supposed to be in Boston.__ This time Tom didn't pick up any hint of his thought processes.

They got to Boston a little later than they'd planned that night, and they got a late start in the morning, and then it started raining, so they didn't get quite as good a look at the Raft campus as Sonny had hoped. It wasn't bad, though, even if it wasn't in the same class as Bromwell, which had libraries big enough to park a jumbo jet in. And Sonny did talk with somebody in the admissions office.

When Tom cautiously inquired following his interview, Sonny said, 'Maybe that experience at Bromwell wasn't all bad.'

Tom's face fell. 'Hey, Sonny, I'm really sorry …'

'No, I meant that maybe I learned something from it that helped me to be more comfortable the second time around.'

'Oh, sorry I misunderstood. I just assumed—'

Sonny finished the thought for him. '—that I was as usual expressing my relentlessly sour view of the world, implying that this went so badly that even what happened at Bromwell improved in comparison. No, I think this interview went well. It helped that I got the feeling that she was just as much trying to persuade me that Raft was right for me as she was trying to find out whether I was right for Raft.' __Unlike your pal Lisa Goldwin at Bromwell__ , he thought, but Tom didn't pick up on it.

He didn't pick up the opportunity for an interview of his own at Raft, either. 'We don't want to be too late back to Lawndale', he said. 'And the rain isn't going to make the traffic situation any better.'

'Okay', Sonny said. 'Seeing as there isn't anything else for us in Boston.'

* * *

When Sonny got home, his parents asked him how the trip had gone.

'Well, we only had time for Bromwell and Raft.'

'Those are the ones you're most interested in, aren't you?' his mother said. 'And they're both schools with great reputations. What did you think?'

Sonny was feeling the weight of his suitcase. He shifted his grip. 'I think Raft likes me better than Bromwell does, and I think Tom likes Bromwell better than Raft. He saw all the good stuff about it, and didn't seem to find the smugness a drawback.'

His mother's face took on a patient look. 'You know, Sonny, Bromwell's high opinion of itself does have some justification.'

'Remember that if I go there and then come home on break referring to you two as "the farmers".'

'What?' Sonny's father said.

'It's a joke, Jake', his mother said heavily, before responding to Sonny. 'We're glad to see you aiming high', she said, the words 'for once' visibly left unspoken, 'but in the end it's your choice, and we respect that.'

'That's right!' his father said. 'Whatever choice my boy makes is good enough for me!'

'Thanks, Dad … I guess.' Sonny heaved a sigh. 'I'm really tired after the trip. I'm heading for bed.'

* * *

Sonny had been thinking of writing a short story, but now he figured he was about twenty pages too deep for 'short' to be applicable. Before he could get deeper, Stacy rang to ask whether he wanted to see __Rope__. 'I thought a film about like, the bumping off your Ivy League classmates, would help you get in the spirit for next year.'

'Hmm', Sonny said, chewing at his lower lip. Stacy wanted to out to a film. 'I'll admit, a good murder movie never fails to cheer me up.'

Stacy suggested it would save her time if she didn't have to pick Sonny up. Sonny made no objection to just meeting there.

'Great!' Stacy said. 'See you inside at seven-thirty.'

The exchange complete, Sonny resumed typing at the point where he'd broken off, but within a minute he paused again and called Stacy back with second thoughts, explaining that, 'I really shouldn't leave my protagonist all alone just after her eyeballs have burst. How about later in the week?'

Stacy acquiesced, suggesting that Sonny call when he was free. Sonny again moved back to his story.

Of course, he had to make up for it in a couple days...

* * *

'Sonny?'

'Yes. Stacy.'

'Um … Quinn says you don't believe in angels?'

'Yes. That's right. I don't', said Sonny, with a complete absence of additional meaning.

'But what about curses? Do you believe in curses? Quinn said she thought you probably don't believe in any of that stuff, but just because you don't believe in angels doesn't have to mean you don't believe in curses? Does it?'

Sonny didn't want to give the question any consideration, but he couldn't help himself. 'I know that sometimes people say things or do things which are intended to lay curses on other people.' He was about to go on to explain about autosuggestion, but Stacy didn't give him a chance.

'But I didn't intend it! Really I didn't!' She began breathing harder and faster. 'See, we were having a cake for my birthday, and Sandi kept interrupting me while I was trying to blow out the candle, so I wished she'd just be quiet, and then after that she came down with laryngitis and lost her voice, but I didn't mean to curse her! And Quinn said I should find somebody who was an expert on hoodoos to tell me how to lift the curse, and you're the only person I know who's an expert on anything!'

'I'm not an expert on curses.'

'Then what am I going to do?' Stacy started to hyperventilate.

'If you didn't say anything out loud, there's no way Sandi or anybody else could know about your wish, and if nobody but you knew about it then there's no way it could have had any effect on anybody.'

Stacy managed to bring herself sufficiently under control to ask Sonny whether he was __sure__. Sonny confirmed it, but Stacy still did not look convinced.

"Besides, isn't your birthday two days from now?"

"It, is, but we have plans then so I was doing this with the Fashion Club so we could spend more time together."

"Ok." _Phew. Even as bad at dating as I am I'm pretty sure forgetting a birthday would be a deal breaker._ "I'm pretty sure a birthday wish has to be on your birthday for it to come true."

That piece of light entertainment was not enough to distract Sonny from his own concerns. At least he could talk with Jane, as they walked home from school together, about how he was feeling, or at least part of how he was feeling, the part about how waiting to hear whether he'd been accepted into college sucked, 'although it does provide the unexpected benefit of taking my mind off every other aspect of my life'.

He thought Jane could have confided in him, as he was confiding in her, but she was cryptically ambivalent about doing so. He wasn't sure whether he should be suspicious of the difficulty in getting the information to flow from her to him or the ease.

The story, or as much of it as he got, was that she'd been rejected by Lawndale State and State University. But given her lack of respect for their art teachers, she could hardly have wanted to go to either of them anyway, surely? That couldn't really be an adequate explanation for her decision not even to submit her portfolio to BFAC, could it? And when she told him that she'd discussed that decision with __Trent__ , how could she possibly have intended that as reassurance?

She did have an argument which, __as a general proposition__ , he could see had merit: that not everybody went to college, that lots of people succeeded in art and in other fields without formal education—especially if the formal education was provided by 'untalented dopes', like the art departments at Lawndale State and State University. It was allegedly only 'Sloane-esque snobbery' that was stopping Sonny from seeing this.

Sonny's problem was not with the general proposition, but with the particular application: not just the particular application of the concept of 'Sloane-esque snobbery' to himself (this wasn't the time to quarrel with Jane about that, he'd save it up for later), but more importantly the particular application of the whole argument to the Jane Lane who was now telling him, 'I gotta be footloose'.

Sonny told her 'screw loose' was nearer the mark. 'I'm not saying everybody has to go to college. I'm saying old footloose Jane Lane doesn't know all there is to know yet about art or anything else, and may be making an ill-advised decision to end her education based on temporary, if admittedly justified, disappointment.'

Just at this point they reached the Morgendorffer house. Jane stopped, turned towards Sonny, and folded her arms. 'Sonny, you're so predictable' she said, as she thrust her face forward and then pulled back again. 'I knew you were going to try to talk me out of this.'

'Is that why you brought it up?'

Maybe he'd carelessly let too much into his voice. Jane gave a shrug and cocked an eyebrow at him. 'Look, Dr Freud, I appreciate your concern and all, but our forty-five minutes are up. See you later.' She unfolded her arms, turned again and walked on. He was left with some thoughts about what she'd said about him and some thoughts about what she'd said about herself, but for a moment he was distracted from both by the bundle of mail waiting for him. He picked it up and carried it inside.

The contents of the promisingly big thick envelope from Raft told him that he'd been accepted.

The contents of the ominously small thin envelope from Bromwell told him, after the depressingly clichéd softening phrases, that he'd been 'wait-listed'. Just to be sure he got the message, the writer—or the automatic form-letter generator—had followed up with an explanation of why the 'waiting list' was 'exceptionally' long this year.

Just at that moment his mother walked into the room. He gave her the two pieces of news and she supplied the formally appropriate congratulations and commiserations, respectively. She also made a feeble attempt to persuade him that he might still get into Bromwell, which she abandoned when he withered it with the contempt it deserved. (Did she not know who she was talking to?)

'Sweetheart', she went on to say, having taken a seat across from Sonny, 'I know you're disappointed, but Raft is a great university, and it's smaller than Bromwell, so you'll probably get more individual attention.'

'Says the woman who thinks Bromwell is a magic carpet ride to success', Sonny said, looking at the floor. 'Don't patronize me.'

'Don't patronize __me__ , Sonny. I haven't changed my opinion of Bromwell, but I haven't changed my opinion of Raft, either. It's a wonderful school.'

Sonny stood up. 'It's just not __the__ wonderful school', he said as he left the room.

When he was up in his bedroom, the phone rang. If he had been firing on all cylinders, he would have reckoned that Tom's letter from Bromwell was likely to arrive at the same time as his own, and he would have guessed that Tom would call when it did. Maybe he had half-realized, subconsciously, but at best he had been only partly ready. Something in his voice when he greeted Tom must have given a hint. He'd have to watch out for that in future. Tom asked him what was wrong. At least he had a good answer.

'It looks like my team isn't going to make the play-offs. Oh, and I've been wait-listed at Bromwell.'

Tom explained that nobody got in from the wait-list as if it were a piece of information Sonny might not already have. Sonny asked him to stop being so diplomatic. Tom apologized for blurting and explained he'd been shocked as if __that__ were a piece of information Sonny might not already have.

'I __did__ get accepted to Raft', Sonny said, failing to change the subject.

'I can't believe it. I was sure you'd get in.'

Obviously Tom's head had been full of images of himself and his boyfriend at Bromwell together. Sonny tried to break in by saying, 'Did I mention that I was accepted at Raft?'

This time Tom registered, but he was still having difficulty with a positive response. Sonny was accustomed to flat responses, but this was different. He asked Tom to control his enthusiasm. Tom was saying good things about Raft, but Sonny knew that it was still Bromwell on his mind. He prompted Tom for confirmation of the reason for his call.

Tom said nothing, so Sonny filled in the blank for him, and Tom half-heartedly owned up.

'Well, surprise of surprises', Sonny said. 'A Sloane at Bromwell.'

When Tom had been sublimely confident that Sonny's 'incredible' grades and test scores would get him into Bromwell, he'd had no trouble saying that he'd get in himself by nepotism. He'd had no hesitation about working the family connection for all it was worth in his interview, and before that in his application (his parents had reviewed it to make sure he hadn't left any relatives out of the alumni section). But now, unsurprisingly, he was defensive.

'Your uncle built them a wing', Sonny said. 'The only thing that might have kept you out of Bromwell is a murder conviction, and even then, only if you'd killed the Dean of Students.'

'Hey, it's not my fault you had a shaky interview. You said yourself it wasn't as good as the one you had at Raft.'

'Maybe because the admissions office at Raft had no reason to look for ancestor anecdotes as a sign of my qualifications.'

There was an edge in Tom's voice now. 'Are you saying it __was__ my fault you had a shaky interview? because I told all those stories to that Lisa Goldwin and created expectations in her mind that you didn't match?'

'You don't think that had anything to do with it.'

' _ _I__ don't know', Tom said. 'Look, Bromwell may be full of old family friends of the Sloanes, but Lisa Goldwin isn't one of them. I didn't have any advantage of prior acquaintance and, yeah, I used some stuff I was lucky enough to know to try to make a good impression on her. Isn't that supposed to be the point of an interview? Is it wrong to use the things you know? Did you want me to set out to create a negative impression? __If__ I did create an atmosphere that made things more difficult for you, and I'm only saying __if__ , then that wasn't the idea, but I'm sorry things worked out that way. May I remind you of something?'

'Is it some other way you think I'm being unreasonable?'

"Never mind. I was going to say my parent's could write a letter for your recommendation. Just, hey, I figured I might be going to Bromwell I actually knew."

"Besides any cousins or old family friends?"

"You know what? Go to hell man." Tom hangs up on Sonny.

They'd barely hung up when Sonny's mother came into the room and asked to finish their conversation. Sonny reported Tom's news as evidence that Bromwell wasn't rejecting everyone.

'Oh, well', his mother said, 'some people have a certain … edge over the rest of us.'

'You don't say.' Sonny blinked and cleared his throat. 'I shouldn't have snapped at you. You were the one who told me about the advantages of a Bromwell education, but on the other hand I'm going to like Raft just fine.'

Sonny's mother sat down on the bed next to him. 'I know you would have preferred to get into your first-choice college, and it was my first choice for you too, but look at me', she said, putting her hand to her chest for emphasis. 'I applied to college with the height of the baby boom. Competition was so fierce I got rejected from my first __and__ second choices. I wound up at Middleton, which isn't half the school Raft is.'

'I noticed you weren't as keen on it as Dad, fortunately.'

'Your father needs to maintain certain illusions about his youth in order to function. It's'—Sonny's mother forced a laugh—'cute. I made the most of the education I did get at Middleton, and so will you, at a much better school. You should be proud of getting into Raft. I know I'm proud for you. And I know you're destined for great things no matter where you go to school.'

Sonny cocked an eyebrow and said, 'All right, then. I suppose I can stop worrying about getting into college and start worrying about this disgusting elitism I've managed to develop during the process.'

His mother cocked an eyebrow back at him. 'Good. That'll keep you from worrying about what kind of weirdo you'll get for a roommate.'

Sonny let his face fall and gave the obligatory groan.

* * *

Sonny had invited Jane out for pizza. Now that his own college future was settled, he wanted to ask Jane again about submitting her portfolio to BFAC. She'd made a point of telling him that she'd decided not to, but that was exactly it—she'd made a __point__ of telling him. He'd checked, and although the normal submission deadline had passed, it wasn't too late to apply for mid-year entry. He hoped, because he paid for the pizza, that she'd feel too obligated to storm off in a huff when he raised the subject. Instead of plunging straight into it, he confided his own story to her.

'I did think', Sonny said, 'And that's the problem. I think too much. I gave a horrible interview at Bromwell because I thought more than I spoke. If only I had a Sloane last name."

'And why should the Sloanes' seal of approval matter more to Bromwell than your transcripts?'

Sonny had to fight back a smirk. "Exactly."

Jane pretended to quote from the letter the Sloanes might write. 'Dear Dean Skippy, please admit Sonny. He's a fine young man, even if he isn't one of us.'

'Exactly. Besides, if they write a recommendation, it'll just make it that much worse when I do get that ultimate rejection.'

'You are very wise for a humble hall boy', Jane said, 'and generous too', she added, turning the subject to Sonny's motive for paying for the pizza, as he had hoped. According to plan, he raised the subject of her BFAC portfolio; as expected, she mentioned the submission deadline and he countered with the mid-year entry date. Then she repeated her opinion (her half-baked opinion, Sonny thought) that she and college were incompatible, before admitting that with the application requirement hanging over her head she hadn't been able to paint anything up to BFAC entry standards. Sonny remembered the joke she'd made about tears of relief the last time he'd invited her out for pizza. He hadn't really believed then that Jane would seriously be so stressed about applying to college—but it meant, he realized, that it did matter to her, no matter what else she said. She further confirmed this—and that the development of her talent also still mattered to her—by telling him that she'd started doing 'some really interesting stuff' again as soon as the pressure was off.

'So it's the old "reject them before they reject me" ', he said.

'Yeah', Jane said, 'the same thing you're doing with Bromwell.'

That didn't sound like a valid analogy to Sonny. He __had__ applied to Bromwell, offering himself up for rejection and receiving it. When he pointed this out to Jane, she said that she'd done the same with State U and Lawndale State.

 _ _That__ didn't sound like a valid analogy to Sonny, either. He had really cared about Bromwell. Despite everything, it was an excellent school. Jane had no opinion of the two schools that had rejected her, or at any rate of their art departments. When he pointed this out, Jane revealed more of the truth. The lack of real interest in art at State University and Lawndale State was such that submitting a portfolio wasn't even part of the application process for their art departments.

'Wait', he said. 'You get rejected by schools that don't care if you have artistic talent, but the one that does care, you decide not to go for?'

Still on the defensive, Jane kept the invalid analogies coming by comparing her decision to avoid rejection by not applying to BFAC with his decision not to let the Sloanes write to Bromwell on his behalf. For Sonny, there was still something more important than straightening the score. If __Jane__ thought the two things were equivalents, well …

'I'll make you a deal.' Sonny gathered himself. Time to fish or cut bait. 'If I prostrate myself before the Sloanes and ask them for that letter, will you finish your portfolio and send it to BFAC?'

'God, Sonny!' Jane's eyes narrowed in totally unjustified surprise and her shoulders twitched. 'You must really think I have a shot.'

'And all I had to do to convince you was offer myself up for a round of thoroughly gratuitous humiliation.'

'Well, I guess I wouldn't be much of a friend if I deprived you of that. You drive a hard bargain, Morgendorffer, but you've got yourself a deal.'

Sonny Morgendorffer made good on his commitments. He made the call to the Sloanes as soon as he got home. Tom knew Jane, Sonny could have told him the real reason he'd changed his mind, but … he couldn't tell Tom, Tom __knew__ Jane. At least Tom was pleased. The only crumb of consolation Sonny could extract from the call was the opportunity to suggest that Tom's parents could just send out 'the form letter'.

'Right', Tom wisecracked back at him, 'the __good__ form letter.'

Maybe it __was__ the good form letter they sent, but whatever it was, it failed to work the charm. Bromwell did write to him again, but only to say that he definitely wasn't getting into the freshman class. His mother commiserated with him, and his father started ranting about the idiocy of Bromwell in rejecting a smart boy like Sonny.

'You know what?' Sonny said. 'I'm not even sorry.'

His mother said, 'You have nothing to be sorry about.'

His father kept ranting. 'Stuffy arrogant …'—he paused to affect a haughty, snobbish voice—'Oh, look at us, we're Bromwell!' Then he returned to a normal voice. 'So long as this doesn't drive you into a military academy! You know, we might be able to find a way to get you into Middleton after all …'

'Jake!' Sonny's mother said. 'Sonny's already been accepted into Raft! What are you talking about?' She looked at Sonny. 'Didn't you tell your father?'

Sonny looked back at her. 'I assumed you'd told him.'

His father said, 'It doesn't matter who told me! My son's going to Raft! That's gonna be great, Sonny! Raft's a damned good school! Better than any military academy!' He started to give his son the kind of friendly male-bonding shoulder-punch that Sonny loathed, checked himself, and embraced him instead. Sonny couldn't account for his own pleasure.

As he sat and thought about being rejected from Bromwell, and going to Raft, Stacy called. "Hey, what's up?"

"Um, you said to call you when I was ready."

"Oh, right." Sonny _had_ forgotten. Well, not forgotten, just been distracted. "I'll uh, pick you up."

"Great! You can tell me all about Raft!"

Now he had a new problem. He would be going to Raft. Stacy would stay here in Lawndale. Of course, a first relationship rarely lasted. Long distances never helped.

Maybe after a year, she could... Not get in to Raft. He had helped her, sure, but not enough to get in to Raft. Maybe Boston University. But that would be a year away. And that's if she even wanted to go there. If she wanted to keep seeing him.

He knew what he had to do. It was the right decision.

Of course that, because it was the right decision, was the easy part. What he had to do next was explain it to Stacy, who was still fixating on Sonny's acception to Raft. Sonny dismissed that. Stacy deserved the truth: they both did. It was just that the transition to college was only going to make it even more obvious that the two of them came from different places and were going to different places—not in the physical sense.

Stacy's gaze shifted around for a moment. 'Sonny, when you say "physically"—you know, whether it's high school or college or whatever, I'm not looking for a boyfriend—I'm looking for the person I want to be with, and I'm not ditching anybody for being a different age or being far away. I'd never do that.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'I can see how it could prey on your mind what I might be suspecting about that, but that's really not the point. Am I really the person you want to be with? Maybe you haven't recognized it yet, but we have little enough in common as it is. You're too, happy, and sweet. I'm the exact opposite."

"Well, you seem happy around me."

"I am, as happy as I can be, some times." Sonny sighed. "Now we won't see each other for months at a time, and every time we do, it'll be more difficult to pick up where we left off.'

'Not if we work at it.' He could see the hurt look on her face and he was surprised by how much it killed him to see it. "If you want to work at it."

Sonny shook his head. He got the feeling that Stacy, though reluctantly, was beginning to accept the truth. 'Why should we work at it when we're already getting bored?'

Stacy made one final struggle to deny it, but she was silenced by Sonny's suggestion that she was just upset that Sonny had admitted the truth first. They sat for a moment in glum silence.

'You'll get over it', Sonny said, the words being what the situation called for. 'We both will.'

Jane came up to their booth, carrying her own slice of pizza.

'Hey, kids! What's new?' she said.

They both looked up from their plates to turn their heads to her. Jane could read both their faces and her own changed unmistakably.

'Oops, sorry', she said. 'Wrong table.' As she walked away to find another booth they looked back at each other silently.

* * *

Sonny had gratefully been seeing less of Quinn than usual. The most recent in a string of expensive sprees on the parental credit card had broken the camel's back, and their parents—well, mainly their mother—had insisted on Quinn's getting a part-time job to repay the money. It had taken up so much of her time that she'd even had to take a sabbatical from her 'duties' with the Fashion Club. Sonny had a vague impression that the experience had not worked out badly for Quinn, but more importantly it had worked out well for him. Too bad his last summer at home couldn't be blessed by Quinn's getting a three-month contract on an offshore oil-rig.

These were not the thoughts running through his mind on the evening he sat at home in front of a switched-off television after breaking up with Tom, not even when Quinn came into the room. Her mood seemed to match his, except that she wanted to talk about it. He didn't bother paying full attention to their conversation. Quinn needed only the barest of prompts from him to keep going. He gleaned that her concern was about a workmate with a drinking problem and whether Quinn should say anything to her.

'I don't really feel qualified to give any advice on interpersonal relationships today', he said.

'Why not?'

'I just broke up with my girlfriend. It's kind of a first for me', he said. 'So is this feeling in my stomach like it's been through a paper shredder.'

Quinn was surprised that Sonny had broken up with Stacy—almost as surprised as Sonny himself had been—and was curious about the explanation. Sonny didn't feel like going through all that again so soon, not with Quinn or with anybody else, and just fed her some woolly clichés: 'come to the end', 'both move on'.

Quinn thought she did know about interpersonal relationships and was more than ready to offer Sonny unasked-for and unwanted advice. To her it seemed obvious that you didn't break up at this time of year because it would leave you with nobody to go out with for summer. Sonny was unimpressed by the idea of asking Stacy to play the role of warm body.

'You don't tell him, or her, Sonny.' Quinn said, as if it should be as obvious to him as it was to her.

'For some reason, I continue to opt for honesty', said Sonny, 'despite mounting evidence that at the end of that road is an aging loner alone in a one-room apartment with old Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand posters peeling from all the walls.'

For some other reason, Quinn was impelled to contradict him with reassurance. She'd been to a college party and thought the people were smart and nice.

As if Sonny would accept Quinn's appraisal. 'So it's the opposite of high school?' he said. That kind of luck was a pipe dream.

'You're gonna have friends and everything. I know it sounds hard to believe.'

'Gee, thanks', Sonny said reflexively. Then he thought about what Quinn was doing. 'But', he said, forcing his voice and his face into a different register, 'um, thanks.'

'You were right to be honest. That's what I'm gonna do.'

'You mean you'll hang out with me in my one-room apartment and tell me what's wrong with the décor?'

At that moment, as Quinn smiled at him, the doorbell rang and it felt to Sonny like a good time to get up and go answer it. It was Jane.

Jane, familiar as she was with how Sonny projected to the world, had reached almost the right conclusion from seeing his facial expression at the pizzeria and again now. She thought 'that bitch' Stacy had dumped him, as she'd always feared.

'No', Sonny said, 'I dumped her.'

'You dumped…'—Jane leaned forward—' _ _you're__ the bitch? Or bastard.' She leaned back again. 'Whoa.'

'Yes, I'm the bastard, and the bastard is hurting like hell.'

* * *

Sonny lay on his bed, on top of the covers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling. The cordless phone receiver lying next to him rang and he picked it up and answered. The person at the other end did not utter a word, but Sonny was sure he heard the sound of a mouth opening and breath coming out of it, and he was sure it sounded like Stacy. He imagined Stacy lying on her own bed staring at the ceiling, but he didn't say anything. After another moment the connection was broken. Sonny sighed and switched off the phone.

* * *

On the last day of school Jane wanted to get straight back to a canvas she'd been working on at home, her recent spurt of inspiration continuing. Sonny walked up to his own house to see Stacy's father's car parked outside it, with Stacy next to it. Stacy's face showed that she was still feeling down over the break-up. Sonny's face, naturally, showed nothing. When they'd greeted each other, Sonny couldn't believe how upset inside he felt.

To Sonny's surprise, Stacy had come to him looking for reassurance. She'd accepted, after much thought, what Sonny had said about their breaking up, but he still wanted to be told that Sonny had liked her once.

Sonny didn't think Stacy should have needed to be told this—why on earth would Sonny, of all people, have got involved with Stacy if he didn't like her?—but it was the truth, so he didn't mind telling it. Besides, he owed it to Stacy.

'Stacy, come on. I still like you. You're a great girl. A little more peppy and optimistic and hopeful than I am…'

'This isn't going quite the way I hoped', Stacy admitted candidly.

'… but a smart, funny girl who's basically very caring and sensitive in the not-pukey way', Sonny continued. 'And somebody who helped me with something important in my life. I probably would have figured out about myself eventually, but I'm glad you came along to make it happen when it did and the way it did, despite what happened at the end. Going out with you worked out to be a really good experience for me.'

Stacy took half a step towards Sonny. 'Thanks for saying that.' She scuffed at the ground with one foot. 'I really look up to you, and your opinion's important to me.'

Sonny blinked twice. 'Huh? Well, I meant what I said. I wouldn't lie to you about something like that.'

'Yeah, I know.' Stacy nodded. 'Do you think next year I could call you from school, and we could compare notes on our lives in a completely non-romantic fashion? You know, like friends?'

'You mean like maybe we could compare notes about our senior years? And I can tell you how college is more like high school than any one could imagine? But still different enough to be worth the tens of thousands of dollars of debt I'll rack up? Hmm, yeah.' Sonny thought quickly, and with an effort changed his voice to sound less like wisecracking. 'Yeah! That's a good idea. Call me. Or I'll call you. That'll be nice.' He was pleased to feel his face signaling his sincerity.

'Okay', Stacy said. 'I'm starting to feel a little better. How about you?'

Sonny caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye of somebody peering at him from behind the curtains in his house.

'See my mother watching us? Or my father?' He tilted his head unobtrusively and firmed up his judgment. 'It's both. You've met my parents, right.' The last word omitted the question mark.

Stacy knew how Sonny felt about interaction with his parents. 'That bad, huh?'

'Well, not as bad as getting beaten up. No worse than a school assembly.' Sonny waited as Stacy got into the car and gave him a subdued wave as she drove off. Then he turned and walked into the house.

When he entered the living room, his parents were making an unconvincing pretense of reading newspapers, and his mother lost no time, once his overt presence licensed her, in dropping both of them (the pretense and the newspaper). She feigned a casual 'how was your day?' inquiry about his last day at school (ever!), but rapidly spilled over into a rare display of solicitousness.

Sonny said, 'I have an announcement to make.'

His mother seemed to be on the verge of breaking down as she started to promise him that things would be 'all right', but his father leapt from the sofa and cut her off.

'Helen, didn't you hear? Sonny has an announcement to make! My son's a smart young man, and I think we can trust him to think about things and make his own decisions. So long as he's not going to a military academy!'

Ignoring both his parents' contributions, Sonny continued. 'I have broken up with my girlfriend. Yes, it hurts, but it was my idea, and despite the pain I feel, I remain convinced it is for the best. I am looking forward to summer, and, to my amazement, excited about college next year. Now I shall go to my room without taking questions.'

'No questions! That's right! And no military academy! What a great announcement!' Sonny's father started to applaud. Sonny's mother turned a baffled wide-eyed stare on him. Sonny turned and headed upstairs, leaving them to it.

* * *

Sonny was letting Jane drag him to the party Jodie was throwing to celebrate graduation. 'One more night with those whose stupidity has so tormented and entertained us, lo, these many years', Jane was calling it: 'A farewell to dopes!'

Overriding Sonny's continued protests, she steered him into the middle of what she called 'the group dynamic you crave so much!' It still tempted Sonny to pull out a can of mace. Then Jodie conventionally welcomed them and went on to ask after Stacy. Sonny limited his explanation to 'No Stacy no more', prefacing it only with a wincing 'Um'. He left it to Jane to provide the detailed response to Jodie's further inquiries. Jodie switched from showing regret to showing regret combined with a little something else—was she actually impressed?

'Yes', said Sonny, 'I terminated the relationship so I could indulge my compulsive need to play the field.'

At just that moment they were interrupted by Brittany, giving Sonny an opportunity to dig himself an even deeper hole when she asked after Stacy. He muttered another 'um' before saying 'covert mission'.

'Really? I didn't know she was religious.'

To complete the cycle, they were then interrupted by Kevin, who also alleged an interest in the person who featured in Kevinworld as 'that girl you know'. When Brittany took it on herself to pass on a version of Sonny's answer, Kevin was excited by the thought of an interplanetary space mission. Sonny and Jane looked sideways at each other, and Sonny thought to himself, __When we have a moment to ourselves, I must check whether this is what you brought me here for.__

But when they did have a moment to themselves, what Sonny did was tell Jane about his most recent encounter with Stacy. He wanted her to confirm that the idea of somebody looking up to him, though flattering, was weird. But what Jane did, to his incredulous response, was to hint that Stacy might not be the only person who valued his opinion and then to say straight out that she took him seriously.

Sonny made a crack about drink-spiking, but Jane ignored it in order to tell him that at his prompting (or, as she called it, 'constant haranguing and brow-beating') she had, after all, submitted her portfolio to BFAC—and been accepted.

Sonny read a lot of fiction, so he knew what his face was doing. It was beaming. And he didn't care.

'Jane Lane! What did you say?'

Jane gestured significantly. 'You. Me. College. Same town. Be ready to have your'—she strangled the next word before she'd more than half-articulated an indeterminate vowel, and stopped gesturing—'I mean, be ready to get dragged to more parties.'

'Hey, you're allowed to be conscious of my anatomy. You're even allowed to refer to it if you want to.' _You've mentioned it before._ "And maybe, I mean, we could..."

Jane feeling uncomfortable as well tries to change the subject. 'Well, anyway, I just got the letter today. So, what do you say? Make a pledge right now to go up to Boston and eat pizza?'

"You got yourself a deal. We've been lucky. Let's not push it.'

Jane raised her drink reciprocally. 'Thanks for talking me into applying. I owe you a huge one.'

'You don't owe me anything. Thanks for helping me get through high school.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. His brain was focused on some thing. It wasn't high school or college. The train of thought just started wasn't even derailed later when he heard the full story of the expected inevitable final break-up of the Fashion Club.

He learned that Stacy had gone to the Web and found somebody who sold her an allegedly curse-removing potion. Unfortunately she'd lost track of which drink she'd put it in, and Tiffany had ended up swallowing it instead of Sandi. Her reaction to the vile taste had provoked a guilty outburst from Stacy disclosing the whole story back to her birthday party, ending with her offering to do anything to make it up to Sandi (although apparently she didn't offer amends to Tiffany, the only person, speaking factually, she had done something unpleasant to). At Jodie's party, Sandi, her voice recovered, presented Stacy with a list of demands which she felt would constitute adequate compensation, but Stacy had executed a worm's turn. Sandi had threatened her Fashion Club membership, but Stacy had decided that she'd be better off going on her own.

Sandi had tried to intimidate her but failed.

Quinn said her sabbatical due to working would be extended even though she had quit working.

Tiffany, after failing to say sabbatical numerous times, decided she too should take a break.

Sandi, flabbergasted that she lost the club, stormed out.

He was proud of Stacy for quitting. Normally they would have... But as friends he could still congratulate her.

Of course, none of this could stop him from thinking about the train of thought that started back at Jodie's party.

Jane smirked when Sonny told her the story. He said, 'Two steps forward, and for once, not one step back'. They were meeting, after the ceremony at the school which confirmed their emancipation, to share their first slices of pizza as actual official high school graduates. Sonny was still thinking about thanks and about things that might be owed, now not only because of their conversation on the night of Jodie's party but because of another thank-you he'd received himself, in the form of an extraordinary invitation. Jane almost dropped her pizza slice when he told her.

'DeMartino asked you to be his best man?' She managed to close her jaw, but then dropped it again. 'Wait, DeMartino's getting married? Who to?'

'Onepu. That's why he's asked me to be his best man. I mean, apart from the fact that I don't think he has any actual friends. Onepu wouldn't even have come to the school if Barch hadn't been removed, and Tony has an idea how much I had to do with that.'

'Tony?'

'I'll have to use their given names at the ceremony, so I'm starting to acclimatize myself now.'

Jane gave him a quizzical look. 'Does that mean you're actually going to do it? You're getting soft around the edges, Morgendorffer.'

'Maybe, or maybe you've got glaucoma.'

Jane chewed and swallowed a thoughtful bite of pizza. 'So does that mean you know her given name too, now? Is it as unusual as Onepu?'

'Daria. So when she was a kid there must have been people at school calling her "Diarrhoea". I hate it when I find reasons to sympathize with people. She was thrilled about having one of the students from the school as best man, and thrilled about the condition I made as well.'

'Condition?'

'Yeah, I said the only way I was gonna be best man was if you were the maid of honor.'

Jane nearly choked. 'Stop doing that to me', she said when she recovered.

'The best man will be expected to dance with the maid of honor, and there is no way I am doing that with anybody else but you. It just wouldn't be right. Especially not at that wedding.'

'Just so long as Mystik Spiral isn't playing. There's only so much heart-warming I can take.'

Sonny nodded. 'But while we're on that subject … and not on public display in the middle of the dance floor at a wedding … there's something I owe you.' He reached across the table and took hold of Jane's hands. 'But more importantly I owe it to myself.' He stood up, drawing Jane up with him.

Then he leaned forward across the table and kissed her.

After a minute they drew apart and sat down again.

Jane turned her head a little to the side, looking over Sonny's shoulder and out of the booth. She grinned hugely at whatever she saw.

'What?' said Sonny.

'Kevin just saw everything.'

"Well, he's not, I don't care." Sonny couldn't stop the slight upcurl of his lips. Almost a smile. "The only thing I care about is my friend."

Jane, much more used to smiling, had no trouble with it. "Friends? Freaking Friends?"

Sonny's smile grew a little more. "Of course."

* * *

 ** _ **Some dialogue from 'Is It College Yet?' by Glenn Eichler and Peggy Nicoll**_**

 ** **A/N And so it ends with Sonny and Jane getting together, at least for now. Would it last? Who knows. I was originally going to then re do from Fire! To first movie but with it being Sonny/Jane at the end of the first movie. But figured this would be easier. Anyways, again, READ THE ORIGINAL as it is really good and the author was cool enough to give me permission to do this.****


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